Putin's Party Wins Record Duma Majority in Kremlin-Controlled Elections as EU Vows Sanctions

President Vladimir Putin's United Russia party has won a record supermajority in parliament, preliminary results released on Monday showed. The tightly controlled three-day vote excluded every political party critical of the Kremlin or the ongoing war in Ukraine, marking Russia's first parliamentary election since the launch of the full-scale invasion in 2022.

According to Central Election Commission chief Ella Pamfilova, United Russia secured 355 of the State Duma's 450 seats. This outcome exceeds the previous record of 343 seats set in 2016 and surpasses the 301 seats required to change the constitution. Final results are expected later in the week. Pamfilova reported voter turnout at more than 59 percent.

Following United Russia, the Communist Party finished second with 40 seats, the nationalist LDPR secured 25, New People took 20, and A Just Russia won four seats. Criticism of the war in Russia remains strictly banned, and Yabloko—the only party publicly calling for an end to the fighting—was barred from running for the national parliament, though it was permitted to contest some regional votes.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov hailed the outcome, telling state media that the indicators point to the highest level of consolidation within Russian society around the head of state. Additionally, United Russia stated that 49 military veterans who fought in Ukraine are expected to enter the Duma as party representatives.

The three-day polling period, which ran from September 18 to 20, also took place across occupied parts of Ukraine, including Crimea and the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia regions. Concurrently, on Sunday, the final day of voting, Ukraine targeted Moscow with what was described as its largest drone attack of the war. The strike killed two people, ignited an oil refinery, and prompted the Russian defence ministry to accuse Ukraine of trying to disrupt the vote while vowing to intensify strikes on Kyiv.

The electoral process drew swift international backlash. The European Union's top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, stated that the Kremlin had silenced dissent and shut out international election monitors. In a statement on behalf of the EU, Kallas said that only a veneer of democracy remains in Russia and noted that the elections underscored a deepening erosion of democracy in an increasingly authoritarian environment. The EU announced it would impose sanctions on individuals who organized the vote or stood as candidates in occupied Ukrainian territories, reaffirming that the bloc does not and will never recognize the elections or their results.

Leaders from Britain, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and Norway issued a joint statement condemning the balloting in occupied areas as a gross violation of Ukraine's sovereignty and the United Nations Charter, emphasizing that the vote cannot alter the status of those territories under international law. They characterized the sham elections as part of a wider system of occupation involving coerced administration, law, media, education, language, and citizenship. Ukraine's foreign ministry similarly denounced the voting in occupied regions as a farce and stated it would not recognize the outcome.

Despite the pervasive restrictions on political opposition—with Putin's primary opponents either imprisoned, exiled, or dead, and his main rival Alexei Navalny having died in an Arctic prison in 2024—one exception emerged at the regional level. In the Novgorod region, where it was allowed on the ballot for simultaneous regional elections, the opposition party Yabloko won just over six percent of the vote, securing enough support to enter the regional parliament.