Russia’s electoral commission has announced the pro-Putin United Russia party as the winners of the country’s first wartime parliamentary election, a vote portrayed domestically and internationally as a referendum on the Ukraine conflict.
The widely-criticised State Duma election, which took place over the weekend, saw the party backed by Russian President Vladimir Putin win around 355 seats in the 450-seat Duma – the lower house of the national parliament.
According to the Central Election Commission, turnout stood just below 60 percent, the highest recorded in well over a decade.
With almost all of the votes counted, the country’s ruling party was found to have won around 58 percent of the vote, followed by Russia’s Communist Party in a distant second place with approximately 14 percent of the vote.
The nationalist Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR) came in third place with nine percent.
The election was the first to include residents of four occupied and annexed Ukrainian regions: Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, with voting also taking place in Crimea, which was annexed by Russia in 2014.
The elections were denounced by the European Union and Ukrainian government among others, who described it as a “sham”.
The Council of the EU said that they “underscored the continued and deepening erosion of democracy in Russia, taking place in an increasingly authoritarian political environment”.
The EU criticised the exclusion of candidates from the anti-war Yabloko party, which was removed from the federal ballot by the Russian supreme court, as well as the “illegal organisation” of elections in the “temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine”.
“These so-called “elections” represent yet another blatant violation by Russia of international law, including the UN Charter, and of Ukraine’s independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity,” the European Council’s statement read, adding that it does not recognise the results of the elections in such territories.
The final day of the election was marked by Ukraine’s largest drone attack of the war so far, which saw at least two people killed and a major oil facility seriously damaged.
Acknowledging the attack, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that the long-range attack had a “very significant impact in the Moscow region”.
“One of Russia’s key oil industry facilities and the aggressor’s logistics facility were hit. These are billions of dollars that sustain the war machine,” Zelensky said in a post on social media platform X.
Russia said that it would “intensify” its strikes on the Ukrainian capital in response, which Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said involved around 1,600 drones, of which he claimed 450 targeted Moscow.
The attack came amid speculation that Putin may announce another round of mobilisation this autumn, even as several European governments sounded the alarm regarding potential escalation in the conflict in the coming months.
Citing military intelligence, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said last week that Russia was planning “hybrid drone and missile strikes” against countries supporting Ukraine, including Poland.
Tusk’s announcement came just hours after air raid sirens sounded and civil alerts were issued in Poland’s southeastern regions in response to Russian aerial attacks on western Ukraine, causing at least one powerful explosion close to the border.
Meanwhile, French President Emmanuel Macron gathered party leaders at the Elysee Palace late last week to brief them on the deteriorating security situation. After the meeting, statements were issued by a number of significant political figures, including Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella of Rassemblement National (National Rally).
“We will never tolerate a foreign power, in this case Russia, hoping to dictate the policy of our country directly or indirectly through intimidation, threats, destabilization, or psychological pressure,” the joint statement said.
Russian officials have denied that they are engaged in hybrid warfare against European nations, with Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov arguing rather that NATO is waging a hybrid war against Russia.