Putin's ruling party secures 'sweeping victory' in Russian regional elections

Russia’s ruling party won a resounding victory in every regional election it contested last week, official results showed on Monday, in what authorities cast as a show of support for President Vladimir Putin’s government.

Russia has banned, jailed or exiled all major opposition politicians since launching the Ukraine offensive in 2022, with elections largely becoming a rubber stamp for Putin and his United Russia party.

The heads of 21 regions went up for election between September 6-8, including the region of Kursk, where Ukraine still controls dozens of villages after mounting a major cross-border offensive last month.

United Russia won 20 out of 21 of them, while an independent pro-Kremlin candidate won the other.

“In my view, the first results of the unified voting day have put a fat end to the attempts of our opponents to destabilise the situation in Russia, to divide our society,” the head of Russia’s upper house of parliament, Valentina Matvienko, told state media.

United Russia also emerged as the largest party in more than a dozen regional parliament elections held during the same period, including in Moscow, according to a state media tally.

In Moscow, independent political party Yabloko lost all its seats in the city’s regional Duma after authorities prevented them from registering any candidates.

United Russia said it won the “vast majority” of its election campaigns in a statement on its website.

“The party has confirmed its status as a leading political force, the party of the majority and the party of the President,” it said.

Russian voting rights group Golos, whose co-chair is in jail, said the elections saw a dramatic reduction in competition, while some people were coerced into voting.

“Evidence of voters being forced to vote was reported both on election days and in the preceding period,” it said in a statement.

“Mass election fraud is a long-standing problem that the current system of election commissions is not even trying to solve,” it said.