No Miracles at the Elections, But Can We Declare Putin’s Triumph?

Russia’s pre-election summer was quite tense: the Yabloko party was first allowed to run in the elections and then immediately barred from it, the ruling United Russia party was showing low approval ratings, the public felt anxious, and the opposition in exile finally (although belatedly) teamed up. Despite all of this, no miracles happened — once again.

The results were predictably boring. After the election weekend, the media has been full of headlines saying that United Russia will form the largest parliamentary faction in the party’s 25-year history. The voter turnout was at 59.32 percent: 62.6 million people cast ballots, which is a ten-year record with nearly 10 million more than in 2021. Russia has been living in the state of full-scale war for more than four years — and in the first parliamentary elections since the war began, people have once again voted for the party of war. What conclusion can we draw from this?

All of IStories sources in the Russian government say the same thing: holding the election was incredibly difficult — both in Moscow and anywhere else. Officials and political strategists note fatigue and apathy — almost unanimously. “Everything is predictable and even boring,” says one source. “The only impression is, it was hard,” another echoes.

It’s important to keep this in mind when looking at United Russia’s “triumphant” statistics. Yes, achieving these results would have been a triumph had there been genuine political competition, but in 2026 Russia, it would be surprising for the ruling party not to achieve them. At least it turns out that securing those results was difficult despite the fact that the ruling party had its entire usual arsenal at its disposal: the public sector employees , early voting and electronic voting (allowing for easier election fraud) mechanisms, money and media resources.

The campaigns of the other parties were subject to strict self-censorship: it was forbidden to talk about what was really weighing on people’s minds, which meant the parties couldn’t distinguish themselves from one another either. Before the election, the New People party got scared that the real protest electorate would flock to vote for them, so they chose to remain silent on those forbidden issues (such as the war) even though it was precisely from them, a staged Yabloko substitute, that people expected statements from. A source among the authorities says that in the end they had to inflate the numbers of votes New People actually had in order to liven up the election picture: “to make it more interesting.”

Another source notes that Leonid Slutsky, the LDPR party’s leader, had persuaded his friends in the Kremlin to improve his party’s results as well. CPRF’s results worsened, but it remained the second-largest party in the State Duma. A Just Russia party barely reached the 5 percent threshold and became the laughing stock within the system: why and for what reason did they decide not to finish it off after all?

All of this took place against a backdrop of high public anxiety, talks of a new mobilization following the vote, and — let’s not forget this — not a single generous promise made to voters. Given these circumstances, the authorities had to fraud a very significant amount of votes, and they succeeded in doing so. One source explained the Kremlin’s obsession with records in human terms: aside from the fact that all parliamentary parties were instructed to frame a high voter turnout as a sign of “national unity in the face of external threats” and war, Putin simply still likes big numbers. “And does he have many other reasons to be happy at the moment?” the source asked.

Did the 62 million Russians who went to the polling stations under these conditions truly demonstrate support for the current course? It sounds paradoxical, but Russian elections are perhaps the least reliable tool for assessing public sentiment today.

At the same time, the trendy skepticism toward the very institution of political parties and elections is currently working in the government’s favor rather than against it. Clearly, a portion of the pacifists decided in advance to stay home after Yabloko was removed from the election, while today Russia’s system conveniently relies on both the lack of political competition and the resulting belief that there’s no point in voting: they say elections in Russia are like seasons changing and winter will come regardless of your choice. I’ve personally seen this logic expressed on social media by acquaintances who decided not to vote this time around. 

Let’s look for something encouraging — in places where people had the chance to vote without fear: United Russia lost in most centers of the anti-war diaspora. The emigrant community, of course, is not a representative sample of Russian society. But it’s nice to know that when the rules of the game change, different scenarios emerge immediately.

All of this, of course, is no cause for great optimism. But the reasonable part of those citizens who did show up at the polls on Sunday hardly expected that their ballot would actually determine the composition of the next State Duma. It was rather a matter of getting to “see some like-minded people” once again  Russians must not despair or look away, losing sight of the value of our own vote and renouncing our civil rights, for this is precisely what the authorities remain most interested in. Despair does not free us from our responsibility, and life under dictatorships is usually a long-term struggle.