Russia's ruling party wins Duma parliamentary election as EU condemns vote
The vote was the first State Duma election since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The EU says it will never recognise voting held in occupied Ukrainian territories
Russia's ruling United Russia party won 57.83% of the vote in the State Duma election, the Central Election Commission said Monday, after over 95% of votes had been counted. The commission said the result would give the party 355 of 450 seats and keep its constitutional majority.
That is up from 49.8% in 2021.
Turnout was reported at 59.32 percent, up from 51.7 percent in 2021, with President Vladimir Putin having cast the election as a test of support for the war in Ukraine.
Yabloko candidates were excluded from the federal list, which the EU said removed the only party with a platform against the war. Yabloko leader Nikolai Rybakov wrote "for peace" on his ballot in St. Petersburg.
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In a statement responding to the election results, the European Council said the vote "underscored the continued and deepening erosion of democracy in Russia." It also regretted that Russia did not invite OSCE observers, which it said denied voters an impartial and independent assessment.
The EU condemned voting organised in occupied Ukrainian territories, including Crimea, Sevastopol and parts of the Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions. It said it will never recognise those votes or their results, and that organisers and candidates there will be sanctioned, and called on Russia to agree to a full, immediate and unconditional ceasefire.
EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas wrote on September 21, in a post on social media, "The veneer of democracy is all that remains in Russia."