Russia’s Central Election Commission has announced preliminary results of the “elections” held in Russia and in the occupied territories on 18–20 September. As expected, the majority of votes were assigned to Putin’s party, United Russia — it was credited with 57.83% of the vote, more than at the last State Duma election before the full-scale war in 2021. Then, according to official data, the party received 49.8% of the vote, Radio Svoboda reports.
The Communist Party was this time credited with 13.81% of the vote, the LDPR with 8.93%, and the New People party with 7.97%. The A Just Russia party did not clear the threshold.
In local elections held in parallel in some regions, candidates from the ruling party won 301 seats out of 450. Representatives of the other five parties received less than 5%, and therefore will not be represented in the State Duma.
Before the elections, the Yabloko party, which positioned itself as anti-war, was barred from taking part by a court.
Holding pseudo-elections in the occupied territory of Ukraine violates a whole range of international legal instruments: the UN Charter; the UN Declaration on Principles of International Law concerning Friendly Relations and Co-operation among States in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations; the Fourth Hague Convention respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land and its annexes, including the Regulations respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land; the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War; the Final Act of the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe; the Paris Charter for a New Europe; the Document of the Copenhagen Meeting of the Conference on the Human Dimension of the CSCE; the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms; the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.