Overview
- Voting began on Sept 18 and runs through Sept 20 as a three‑day ballot with electronic voting and public turnout reporting to encourage participation across roughly 111 million eligible voters.
- Most genuine anti‑war voices were squeezed from the ballot and the liberal Yabloko party was removed from the party‑list race by the Supreme Court, narrowing voters’ choices.
- For the first time ballots are being cast in Russian-controlled parts of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson and in Crimea, moves that Ukraine’s foreign ministry and the European Commission have declared illegal and will not recognise.
- The Kremlin has promoted about 200 veterans as prominent candidates to burnish wartime legitimacy and to signal careers for fighters, a step analysts say could be used to boost recruitment.
- United Russia is widely expected to retain dominance of the State Duma and the vote will be treated by Moscow as a mandate for its policies, even as independent observation was not invited and local reports cite security incidents and infrastructure disruptions at some polling sites.