Calling this an election insults the word. The one party that dared oppose the war, Yabloko, got erased from the ballot by the Supreme Court twelve days after registering, with two of its deputy leaders sitting in prison and candidates jailed or barred. A record 355 seats for United Russia proves nothing except that a vote with no real choice delivers whatever the Kremlin orders.
More than 62 million Russians turned out and handed United Russia 57.83% while cyberattackers hammered the voting infrastructure with over 1,000 waves of DDoS assaults. Ten parties competed, four cleared the threshold and international observers from the Shanghai Cooperation Organization found no violations, calling the vote transparent and credible. Yabloko even won a seat share in the Novgorod regional Duma.
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