Vladimir Putin's United Russia party has claimed a historic supermajority in the Russian parliament, according to early results announced Monday. The three-day vote was tightly controlled and barred all parties that criticized the Kremlin or the war in Ukraine. Central Election Commission head Ella Pamfilova reported that United Russia won 355 of the 450 seats in the State Duma. This surpasses the party's previous record of 343 seats from 2016 and exceeds the 301 needed to amend the constitution.
Final results are expected later in the week, according to Euronews. The Communist Party placed second with 40 seats, followed by the nationalist LDPR on 25, New People on 20, and A Just Russia on four.
Pamfilova noted that more than 59 percent of eligible voters participated in the election. This was Russia's first parliamentary election since Moscow began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Russian law restricts criticism of the military campaign, and Yabloko, the only registered party openly calling for an end to the fighting, was excluded from running a federal party list.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said the results showed a high level of public support for the head of state. United Russia announced that 49 veterans who served in Ukraine are expected to join the Duma as members of the party.
Voting also occurred in occupied parts of Ukraine including Crimea and the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia regions. On the final day of voting, Ukraine launched a major drone attack on Moscow and the surrounding region that Russian officials said caused multiple deaths and damaged an oil refinery.
Russia's defense ministry accused Ukraine of trying to disrupt the vote and vowed to intensify strikes against Kyiv. European Union foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said the Kremlin had silenced dissent and excluded international election monitors. She described the situation in Russia as a 'veneer of democracy' remaining only on the surface.
In a joint statement, the EU said it would impose sanctions on those involved in organizing the vote or running as candidates in occupied Ukrainian territory. Britain, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and Norway also condemned the elections held in occupied areas, calling them a violation of Ukraine's sovereignty. They emphasized that the vote could not alter the legal status of those regions under international law.
These elections were part of a broader occupation strategy, including imposed administration, media control, and education systems backed by coercion. Ukraine's foreign ministry dismissed the vote in occupied regions as a farce and refused to recognize its results.
One unexpected outcome was that Yabloko won enough votes in the Novgorod region to enter the regional parliament. In that area, Yabloko received just over six percent of the vote, which allowed it to gain representation in local elections.
Many prominent Putin opponents are in exile or prison, while others have died. His main rival, Alexei Navalny, passed away in an Arctic prison in 2024.
Yabloko failed to win any seats at the national level, according to Reuters. However, the party did gain representation in the Novgorod regional parliament after receiving about six percent of the vote. The Communist Party, not Yabloko, was projected to receive 40 seats in the State Duma.
Russia did not invite observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe to monitor the parliamentary election. The OSCE said the decision violated commitments Russia had made as a participating state. One voter said she saw early results showing United Russia leading in the morning. When asked what she would like to change, she replied that the most pressing issue was the conflict in Ukraine. She said she wanted the conflict to end sooner and peacefully if possible.
The European Union said the election took place in an increasingly authoritarian political environment and criticized Russia for excluding opposition forces and independent international monitors. Five countries including Australia, Britain, and Canada jointly condemned Russia’s elections in occupied Ukrainian territories as a sham.
United Russia received 57.83 percent of the party-list vote with more than 95 percent of ballots counted. Pamfilova described the election as clean, while opposition activists living outside Russia alleged widespread fraud.