Independent monitors report widespread violations in Russia's Duma election
Russia is wrapping up three days of voting for the State Duma, the first such election since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine began, with independent observers documenting hundreds of violations while officials acknowledge only isolated incidents.
Russia has held a three-day vote to elect 450 deputies to the State Duma, the first parliamentary election since the start of the full-scale war against Ukraine. Residents of Ukraine's occupied territories also took part. After the Yabloko party was barred from the federal party list, ten parties remained on it, though Yabloko candidates are still running in single-mandate districts. In parallel, 39 regions elected local legislatures and eight regions elected their governors.
Officials downplay, observers disagree
Russia's human rights ombudswoman, Yana Lantratova, described the vote as democratic and transparent, saying hotlines mostly received routine inquiries. The Central Election Commission likewise denies mass violations but has admitted several serious incidents: in the Komi Republic, 48 ballots pre-marked for the ruling United Russia party were found at one polling station, while in Mari El, surveillance footage caught ballot stuffing. The ballots were annulled, three commission members were suspended, and commission chief Ella Pamfilova called the incident brazenly shameless.
Independent monitors, including the platform tracking the vote and Yabloko representatives, report a far larger scale of problems — hundreds of cases involving the unlawful removal of observers and commission members from polling stations, threats from election officials and police, denial of access to commission documents, and bans on photography. In Stavropol Krai, observers said they were barred from moving around a polling station, leaving parts of the ballot boxes and booths out of view. In Moscow, voters complained of being pressured into electronic voting, and the system reportedly malfunctioned, with at least one voter told he had already voted when he had not, then denied a paper ballot. In the Kemerovo region, an observer found a 700-ballot discrepancy between ballots issued and votes cast, while in the Lipetsk region a voter found her signature already recorded before she had voted.
Analysts also flagged unexplained turnout surges in several regions, including a 20% first-day jump in the Ivanovo region, and observers in the Novosibirsk and Sverdlovsk regions reported buses bringing in voters en masse without police intervention. First results are expected once polls close in the Kaliningrad region.
