Russia’s parliamentary vote features no real opposition to Putin's policies

Russia’s parliamentary election features the Kremlin's main party, United Russia, and nine others that all support President Vladimir Putin’s policies. The only party that dared to oppose the war in Ukraine has been barred from the ballot.

The absence of genuine opposition all but assures the Kremlin will keep tight control of the Russian political scene amid mounting economic costs and increasing Ukrainian attacks on oil refineries and online retailers. Those drone strikes have made Russians feel the pain from the war more than 4½ years after its start.

The Kremlin wants the election — the first since the start of the full-scale invasion in 2022 — to underline public support for the war and give a veneer of legitimacy to its action. It has sought to avoid any political risks by stamping out even the slightest sign of dissent.

Here's what to know about the election and its main parties:

Starting Friday and lasting through Sunday, Russians will elect members of the lower house, the State Duma. They also will cast ballots in local elections. Voters in 11 regions will elect their governors, and 39 regions will elect members of regional legislatures.

The balloting is spread over three days in a bid to boost turnout among the 111 million eligible voters and includes areas that Russia illegally annexed in Ukraine. Electronic voting is allowed.

Half of the Duma's 450 seats are filled by party lists and the other half are contested in single-ballot races. The main Kremlin party, United Russia, is set to retain its overwhelming control of the Duma, while other “systemic opposition” parties that vote in sync with the government on all key issues also are expected to retain their presence.

The liberal Yabloko Party, the only registered political party that opposes the war, initially was on the ballot but the Supreme Court in August ordered it removed. It cited, among other reasons, that the anti-war stance was akin to seeking the violation of Russia’s territorial integrity. Yabloko now only has candidates in single-ballot races.

United Russia, whose symbol is a bear prowling beneath the Russian tricolor, won more than two-thirds of the Duma’s seats in the 2021 election. It is again poised to dominate the body.

Even amid growing public fatigue, recession and stagnating living standards, the massive state propaganda machine and tight control over the election all but assure United Russia's victory.

The party's list is led by political heavyweights: Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, 76, who has been Russia’s top diplomat for 22 years, and Sergei Sobyanin, 68, the powerful mayor of Moscow.

In an apparent bid to add fresh faces in what is widely seen as a party of bureaucrats, its No. 3 official is war correspondent Yevgeny Poddubny, who was badly wounded by a Ukrainian drone.

Members of United Russia have vowed to back the war effort and Putin's maximalist goals in what the Kremlin calls the “special military operation” in Ukraine.

At the same time, Sobyanin, who is widely seen as a pragmatist, has rebuffed calls by Russian hawks for a broad mobilization of conscripts and putting the entire economy on a war footing.

“To destroy a normal economy is to destroy the country altogether,” he said in remarks reflecting Kremlin hopes to win the war without risking a broad, unpopular mobilization.

The Communist Party has been a leading force in parliament since the 1990s, led for more than three decades by 82-year-old Gennady Zyuganov, a former Soviet official.

Throughout Putin’s rule of over a quarter-century, the Communists have criticized some aspects of government policy but carefully avoided any criticism of him. They steadfastly support the war in Ukraine.

“We strictly adhere to President Putin’s directives,” Zyuganov said last month while overseeing a shipment of military supplies.

The party is increasingly active on social media as it seeks to shift from relying on elderly voters to expand its base to a younger generation.

The misleadingly named Liberal Democratic Party is an ultranationalist force that has been a significant presence in parliament since the early 1990s. Founded by Vladimir Zhirinovsky, an outspoken firebrand who frequently called for reclaiming former Soviet lands and threatened to use nuclear weapons against Russia’s enemies, it competes with the Communists by trying to cater to voters nostalgic for the USSR.

After Zhirinovsky’s death in 2022, the party has been led by Leonid Slutsky, an uncharismatic former professor who weathered sexual harassment allegations.

Like the Communists, the LDPR staunchly supports the war and boasts of having multiple veterans as members. Among its candidates is Viktor Bout, a former arms trader nicknamed the “Merchant of Death.” He was serving a 25-year prison sentence in the U.S. before being exchanged in December 2022 for WNBA star Brittney Griner, who had been arrested 10 months earlier in Moscow for possession of cannabis oil.

The party known as A Just Russia has been on Russia’s political scene for two decades. A social-democratic party, it competes with the Communists for older and middle-aged voters nostalgic for the Soviet past, and it supports the war in Ukraine.

Its leader, Sergei Mironov, 73, once gained headlines by posing with a symbol of brutality — a sledgehammer given to him by Yevgeny Prigozhin, the late Wagner mercenary leader shortly before his failed 2023 mutiny. The Wagner group purportedly used sledgehammers to kill people it deemed traitors.

The New People Party was founded shortly before the last parliamentary election in 2021, seeking to position itself as a liberal voice representing younger voters and technocrats. It won just over 5% of the vote, allowing it to form a small faction.

Even though it once cast itself as an opposition force, it embraced Putin’s policies after the vote, disappointing many of its backers. Led by Alexei Nechayev, the head of a cosmetics firm, the party was widely seen as a product of the Kremlin, intended to cater to the liberal audience and to present a semblance of political competition.

Among the other parties seeking seats are Communists of Russia, a small rival of the main Communist Party; the Party of Pensioners; the Green Party; the Party of Direct Democracy; and the Motherland Party.

Motherland, a hard-line nationalist party, has repeatedly changed its structure and leadership since its start in the early 2000s. It's led by Alexei Zhuravlev, who holds its only seat in the Duma and is known for vociferous attacks on the West on state TV. It was Zhuravlev who went to the Supreme Court to remove Yabloko from the ballot.