San Francisco Frontiers - Russians begin voting in controlled election as war drags

It will be Russia's first parliamentary election since Moscow sent troops to Ukraine in February 2022. The conflict has since killed hundreds of thousands.

Only parties that support Putin and the Kremlin's dragging military campaign have been registered to run. Moscow has also organised voting in occupied Ukraine.

While few in Russia doubt Putin's United Russia party will sail to victory again, the vote is an opportunity for the Kremlin to gauge public support for the Ukraine war, the effects of which have hit home more than ever this year.

The vote to renew the 450 seats in the Duma, Russia's lower house of parliament, will run until 1800 GMT on Sunday.

Russia's Kamchatka peninsula and Chukotka -- on the Pacific -- are the first of Russia's 11 time zones to begin voting.

Putin has ruled Russia since New Year's Eve 1999 and his United Russia party has dominated Russian politics since the early 2000s.

Moscow has banned criticism of its Ukraine campaign and the Russian elections, tightly controlled by the Kremlin, are bringing few surprises.

- 'Emotionally important to Putin' -

United Russia is only facing parties who back most of Putin's policies and the war in Ukraine: the Communist Party, the nationalist LDPR, A Just Russia and New People.

Yabloko, which called for an end to fighting, was barred from running shortly before the vote. One of its main figures, Lev Shlosberg, was imprisoned for criticising the war.

Apostol, a 20-year-old Muscovite, told AFP he "did not see the point" in voting for anyone but United Russia because they will "win anyway".

Tatiana Stanovaya, a France-based Russian political expert, said Putin liked to "compare his political situation" to those in European countries.

"So he can always say, look, we had an election. I benefit from such significant support of Russians," she told AFP.

"So for him it's personally, emotionally, politically very important," she said.

Ahead of the vote, the 73-year-old leader called on Russians to vote to show troops that "behind our fighters stand millions of people" and to demonstrate a "common answer to those who want to weaken Russia."

The war has broken Moscow's ties with the West, which has hit Russia with massive economic sanctions.

- New mobilisation? -

In the absence of a public debate and with protests banned, the vote will serve as a barometer for the Kremlin of public frustration with the conflict, which has no end in sight.

This year, the war hit ordinary Russians more than ever, with Ukrainian strikes reaching as far as the Urals and Siberia, and causing billions of rubles in damage -- as well as civilian deaths deep inside Russia.

Putin's political opponents have mostly been driven into exile and his main opponent Alexei Navalny -- who once brought thousands to the streets during elections -- died in an Arctic prison in 2024.

Russia's exiled opposition called on anti-Kremlin Russians not to boycott the elections but to vote "against Putin's party", publishing recommendations of who to back in which region.

Navalny's widow Yulia Navalnaya also called on anti-war Russians to vote at the same time -- at noon on Sunday.

Yabloko, however, disagreed, arguing that it was better not to vote.

"You are suggesting that we once again go, like sheep, dancing to their tune, and vote for those who have caused the deaths of people in Russia and Ukraine?" its chairman Nikolay Rybakov said at a party meeting in Saint Petersburg this week.

Some fear the post-election period in Russia will bring a new military mobilisation, similar to the one in 2022, when Putin called up 300,000 reservists.

That hugely unpopular move led to an exodus of draft-age men out of Russia.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has accused the Kremlin of planning a fresh mobilisation campaign "this autumn", a suggestion Putin has denied.

K.Gray--SFF