Putin's United Russia Set to Keep Duma as 1.5 Million War Casualties Fuel Fatigue
Updated
Updated · The Guardian · Sep 16
Putin's United Russia Set to Keep Duma as 1.5 Million War Casualties Fuel Fatigue
3 articles · Updated · The Guardian · Sep 16
Summary
Millions of Russians vote this weekend in parliamentary elections widely expected to leave Vladimir Putin’s United Russia in control, with the main uncertainty the scale of its managed victory rather than the outcome.
About 1.5 million Russian casualties in Ukraine, fears of another mobilization and drone strikes deep inside Russia have made war fatigue harder for the Kremlin to mask and raised the political cost of obvious fraud.
Yabloko, a small liberal party, was barred last month after campaigning on “peace and freedom,” a sign authorities saw even limited anti-war sentiment as risky enough to suppress before voting.
The Kremlin now appears to prefer a low-turnout, low-drama election that preserves the fiction of pluralism through licensed opposition parties while avoiding a result so inflated it exposes the system’s lack of consent.
The report argues that this model of managed democracy relies on repression, cynicism and hollowed-out institutions long before ballots are fully emptied of meaning.