‘The ritual is complete’

Russia’s first wartime parliamentary elections are over. What did they reveal? And what comes next?

Russia’s first parliamentary elections since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine brought no real surprises: the results, analysts say, were decided well in advance. But if the vote barely shapes who holds power or where the country is headed, why does the Kremlin still bother staging it? And what comes next? Novaya Gazeta Europe put those questions to a political scientist, a sociologist, a political strategist, and an election analyst.

Yabloko ruined the authorities’ plans for a quiet election

The Russian authorities’ original plan was to keep campaign season as “boring, uneventful, and administratively controlled” as possible, according to an election analyst who asked to remain anonymous. But one party, the liberal Yabloko, ruined this strategy by running on an explicitly anti-war platform.

“So everyone except Yabloko played by the system's current rules,” the analyst said. “Yabloko played by the rules the system had five years ago.”

In past years, he explained, the party posed no serious threat to the authorities. But after five years of war, its position had become “radical” in the authorities’ eyes, “even though the position itself hadn’t changed.”

“At some point they decided to break from the script of a quiet election,” he said. “In the end they went the forceful route: they disqualified Yabloko, disqualified pretty much every candidate with any visibility, and disqualified [Yabloko’s] regional lists — everywhere except the Novgorod region. That really did become the main story of this election.”

Sociologist Igor Eidman noted that Yabloko’s very attempt at a State Duma run seemed to demonstrate that not everyone in Russia backs the war. But politically and electorally, he said, it had no bearing on the official results.

Still, a predetermined outcome doesn't mean holding the election serves no purpose for the authorities. Political strategist Stanislav Belkovsky argued that it functions above all as a ritual:

“The event is meaningless in terms of any real political process, but it’s part of the ritual of power,” he said. “In that sense you could compare it to the Victory Day parade on Red Square, or the Kremlin reception on 12 June [Russia Day]. Does either of those carry any political significance? None whatsoever. But they do carry ritual significance — because, from Vladimir Putin’s point of view, observing the ritual is an important part of maintaining the stability of power.”

For example, Belkovsky said, the Kremlin has every interest in keeping the New People party around as a “liberal showcase”. “That’s a bluff too, of course, because on matters of substance New People are no different from any of the other Kremlin parties,” he said. “They are, fully and completely, adherents of totalitarianism and of war to final victory. Everything else is just minor details.”

Also telling, experts said, was the situation surrounding the party A Just Russia, whose share of the vote hovered right around the five-percent threshold needed to enter the Duma. (It ended up with exactly 5.00%.) Political scientist Ivan Preobrazhensky called it a project that never had an independent political programme of its own to begin with.

“If A Just Russia doesn’t make it to the Duma, it won’t play any role at all in Russia’s domestic politics,” he said. “...There isn’t a single living political party that’s been allowed to take part in Russian elections at this point.”

Was there any point to taking part?

Preobrazhensky suggested that for Russian citizens, taking part in the vote may have served, above all, a psychological purpose. For many people, he said, the civic ritual itself matters — going to a polling station and casting a ballot. For some, voting, spoiling a ballot, or joining protest initiatives like showing up to vote at exactly noon became a way to take at least some kind of action, in a situation where there’s no real way left to influence the outcome.

Eidman, the sociologist, argued that taking part in the vote not only fails to affect the result, it actively helps the authorities keep up appearances.

“During the staged presidential election in 2024, opposition leaders urged people to go out and vote. In Berlin there were huge numbers of opposition figures, huge crowds, enormous lines. And what did it lead to? Officially, Putin won anyway. But for German media, there was a picture: massive crowds of people going to vote. So for a Western audience, the imitation of a democratic process succeeded. People showed up, people stood in line — and Putin won regardless,” he said.

The independent election analyst took the opposite view: he told Novaya Europe that when it comes to the potential for fraud, participation and non-participation are not equivalent at all.

“The greatest joy for anyone rigging an election is abstention — people not voting. It makes their job much easier. High natural turnout is always a problem for people manipulating an election,” he said.

What to expect next

Political strategist Stanislav Belkovsky argued it’s a mistake to treat the Duma election as a turning point after which the Kremlin will start pursuing a fundamentally new policy. According to him, Putin holds legislative power in contempt, and there isn’t a single deputy in the Duma who could ever go against the Kremlin’s official line.

“The Duma election isn’t some milestone, or a turning point, or a ‘barometer,’ as some analysts have called it,” Belkovsky said.

“It’s simply part of the ritual, and that ritual is now complete,” he continued. “...Will there be mobilisation? That doesn’t depend on this election having taken place. Putin is afraid of the very word ‘mobilisation’. He sees it as destabilising. So unless he feels a real threat of defeat, he won’t move to an official mobilisation. That said, he still has plenty of room for covert and indirect mobilisation.”

Eidman added that the official results can be used by the Kremlin to claim a “mandate” from society for whatever decisions come next.

At the same time, Preobrazhensky said, organising the election exposed a conflict between different factions within the government.

“This conflict was likely bigger than just a struggle between the FSB, which was tasked with overseeing the operation, and whoever previously handled domestic policy, meaning the presidential administration. The central question that emerged during this vote was who controls domestic policy. During the so-called official campaign period, domestic policy was, quite unambiguously, controlled first and foremost by the FSB,” the analyst said.

Whether the FSB manages to hold on to that control, Preobrazhensky concluded, will determine how Russia’s political situation develops from here.