Putin’s party set to retain two-thirds Duma majority

MOSCOW

Russia’s ruling United Russia party was on course to retain its two-thirds parliamentary majority, according to preliminary results and projections reported on Sept. 21, after voting marked by Ukrainian drone strikes and reported cyberattacks.

With just over 71 percent of ballots counted, the party backing President Vladimir Putin had 57.5 percent of the party-list vote, according to Central Election Commission figures cited by state news agency TASS.

The Communist Party followed with 14 percent and the nationalist LDPR with 8.7 percent. TASS projected that United Russia would retain its two-thirds majority in the 450-seat State Duma, the lower house of parliament.

The Sept. 18–20 election was Russia’s first parliamentary vote since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Voting also took place in Russian-occupied Ukrainian territories.

Russia’s Supreme Court barred the anti-war Yabloko party’s national list, although some of its candidates remained on the ballot in single-member constituencies.

Putin had urged Russians to participate as a show of support for the country’s troops. Yulia Navalnaya, whose husband, opposition leader Alexei Navalny, died in prison in 2024, called on anti-war voters to cast their ballots at noon on the final day.

AFP reporters saw dozens of opposition supporters protesting outside Russian embassies in Berlin and London.

Central Election Commission chair Ella Pamfilova said election infrastructure had faced more than 1,000 waves of distributed denial-of-service attacks, which overwhelm systems with internet traffic.

She said the attacks appeared to involve coordinated groups using artificial intelligence tools but did not identify those responsible.

Ukrainian drone strikes on the final day of voting killed two people in the Moscow region and set an oil refinery ablaze, Russian officials said.

Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin described the assault as the largest on the capital since the war began, saying 450 drones had been aimed at the city.

Russia’s Defense Ministry accused Kyiv of trying to disrupt the election and said it would intensify strikes on what it described as military targets in the Ukrainian capital.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky praised the operation on Sept. 20, saying: “Our long-range responses had a very significant impact in the Moscow region last night.”