Online Reporter
Russia’s ruling party, United Russia, on Friday won a record number of seats in the lower-house State Duma, election, leaving the country’s Western detractors scampering for breath.
In the country’s first wartime parliamentary elections, Central Election Commission (CEC) Chairwoman Ella Pamfilova announced that United Russia won 349 seats in the 450-seat State Duma, beating its previous record of 343 seats set in 2016.
The West, who would have loved the ruling party’s support to dwindle citing the war and the occupied territories were left leaking wounds of humiliation after the Communist Party got with 37 seats, the Liberal Democratic Party with 23 seats, New People, 19 seats and A Just Russia got 17 seats.
Pamfilova also said, for the first time ever, Ukraine war veterans who ran for political office won 46 seats.
President Vladimir Putin has been on record, repeatedly hailing veterans-turned-politicians as Russia’s “new elite.”
Of international interest is the fact that Election officials confirmed the turnout, which included voting in Ukrainian territories taken over by Moscow in the ongoing war, at 59.8 percent — the highest since the 2011 State Duma elections.
“This was made possible despite all the everyday difficulties caused by sanctions, terrorist threats and drone strikes,” Pamfilova said at a press conference on Friday afternoon.
The CEC also reported that over 280 000 Russians voted abroad at 333 polling stations across 152 countries.
Pamfilova said United Russia received 58 percent of the votes cast abroad, adding that attempts by exiled opposition figures to disrupt the elections had “failed”.
The results of Russia’s first wartime parliamentary elections, which independent experts have said were the most competitive in the country’s modern history, leave an egg splashed on the faces of Western detractors.
It is fact not fiction that Russia has been at war with Ukraine and while Ukrainian President Vladmir Zelenskyy has brazenly avoided elections citing the war, Russia has gone to elections – first the presidential elections won emphatically by president Vladimir Putin and secondly, the recent State Duma elections won emphatically by the ruling United Russia party.
The West which preaches electoral democracy has never pushed Ukraine to elections and pushed Zelensky to legitimise his stay in office.
Russia has stuck to its election calendar, while the Ukraine regime has remained illegitimately out of time and moribund.
Russia should be praise for religiously sticking to its election schedule and showing the world how things are done.
There is no doubt that the Russian election has given insights into Russian public opinion and the Kremlin’s vision for the country’s future, even at war. – Belgian ThinkTank.
