Arrests, armed soldiers and opposition parties banned: How Putin controlled Russia’s ‘sham’ elections

Vladimir Putin’s party is set to win by a comfortable majority as voting closed in the country’s tightly-controlled parliamentary elections, widely branded a sham.

Initial data from Russia’s Central Election Commission suggests the leader’s United Russia party is in the lead to win with 57.8 per cent of the votes and over 90 per cent of the ballots processed.

The Commission claimed turnout was at a record high with over 56.6 per cent of Russians casting their vote, up from around 52 per cent in 2021. Putin won the most recent presidential elections in 2024 with 88.5 per cent of the public vote and is not set to stand again until 2030.

However, the elections, which took place between Friday and Sunday, were held in strict and militarised conditions with some voters barred and observers detained at poll booths, according to reports.

Images released on Friday showed voters casting their ballot at apparent gunpoint with fully armed soldiers standing in local voting centres.

In comments, broadcast ahead of the voting, Putin said: “Your choice and determination will show once again that millions of people are backing our fighters and that we stand together, united by shared values, our historical memory, love for our Motherland.”

The Kremlin is expected to use the win to insist that the Russian people support Putin and his war with Ukraine, despite minimal territorial gains, mounting casualties and declining support for the president.

Voters were seen dropping their ballots in a box as armed Russian solders stood by and watched in the Donetsk region.

Independent European observers were turned away from the polls after Russia’s foreign ministry accused the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe of “double standards” for its criticism of Russia.

The OSCE parliamentary assembly president Pere Joan Pons said that the decision to turn observers away is a breach of Russia’s commitments as a member state.

In a statement released last month ahead of the elections, the Maria Telalian, director of the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights called the decision “deeply regrettable” adding that it “continues a pattern of not implementing the commitments that every OSCE participating State has undertaken towards its own citizens and the international community.”

“The absence of independent and impartial international election observation by the OSCE deprives voters, electoral stakeholders and the wider international community, of an objective assessment of the electoral process, reducing transparency and public confidence,” she said.

Yabloko, the liberal opposition party, said that one of its observers lost consciousness while being arrested by police after officials accused him of trying to “disrupt the election” at a polling station in St Petersburg on Saturday. The Communist Party also said many of their observers had been turned away.

Parties also reported violations including sealed ballot boxes being opened and polling station doors not being secured overnight. Some said there had been a refusal to issue paper ballots in some instances. The claims could not be independently verified.

Critics have said that there are few available avenues for genuine dissent in Russia, with the European Policy Centre calling it an “election without real choice”.

Amanda Paul, deputy head of the Europe in the world programme at the EPC, said that the vote “took place in a system where dissent is not tolerated and meaningful opposition has been squeezed out”. She noted that any meaningful opposition to Putin’s party are “jailed, exiled, excluded or dead”.

Last month, Russia’s supreme court barred Yabloko from standing in the party ballot, cutting out the only party to oppose the invasion of Ukraine.

Paul says that recent Russian drone attacks were framed as an attempt by the “Zelensky junta and its Western sponsors” to disrupt the vote.

The elections came as Ukraine launched one of its biggest attack on Moscow since the invasion with over 1,110 drones launched across Russia.

Dramatic images and footage from the scene show large plumes of smoke covering the city as well as huge fires. The Kremlin vowed to “intensify” its attacks on Ukraine in response.

“The message was clear: this was not simply an election, but another front in the war,” Paul wrote.

Ballots were also staged in Ukraine’s occupied territories which were condemned by Britain, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Norway.

“These sham elections are part of a wider system of occupation: the imposition of Russian administration, law, media, education, language and citizenship, backed by coercion and repression,” they said in a statement.

“This includes reports of the enforced disappearance, detention, and torture of thousands of Ukrainian citizens.”

Voting was held for the second time in the annexed Crimean Pensisula and for the first in Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia.

The statement continued: “These regions are part of Ukraine and holding sham elections cannot alter the status of these territories under international law.”

Anti-Putin protests took place outside the Russian embassy in Berlin and London over the weekend to protest against the invasion of Ukraine and his leadership.

Russia’s exiled opposition, including the widow of Alexei Navalny, Yulia Navalnaya, called on anti-war Russians to cast their votes.

Mark Podberezin, a journalist, said members of the election commission in Yerevan, the capital of Armenia, made remarks that felt like “outright intimidation". He said he had heard comments "along the lines of, ‘You’ll have to return to Russia sooner or later, keep that in mind.’”

Ella Pamfilova, chair of Russia’s Central Election Commission, said that the vote was “clean” amid the allegations from opposition activists that the elections hasd been rigged.

Pamfilova also said that the electronic voting system in Moscow had been targeted by cyberattacks and blamed one of the “systemic parties” for glitches.

People were not issued paper ballots in some areas and were asked to vote via an electronic terminal, SotaVision, an independent Russian news outlet said on Telegram.

Leonid Volkov, a close associate of Navalny said that the breakdown of the system used to issue paper ballots may have been deliberate and urged voters to “demand a paper ballot!” Lines formed outside polling stations as many voters refused to vote electronically.