The United Russia party has won a record number of parliamentary seats after a controlled election that President Vladimir Putin is likely to use as a mandate to continue his aggression in Ukraine, a Russian economist has told Newsweek, as speculation grows over whether the election will precede a military draft. Russia's Central Election Commission (CEC) said on Monday that the ruling United Russia party linked to Putin would get 355 seats in the 450-seat State Duma. This would beat its previous record from 2016 of 343 seats, after getting almost 58 percent of the party-list vote and dominating single-member districts.
Reports of ballot stuffing, malfunctioning voting machines and a turnout analysts said was inflated marked the three-day election that took place amid stubborn inflation, new U.S. sanctions and a wartime economy that Russians are feeling. Newsweek has contacted the CEC for comment. Sergei Guriev, who served as rector at Moscow's New Economic School between 2004 and 2013 and was an informal adviser to former President Dmitry Medvedev, told Newsweek on Monday that Putin would point to the ballot as showing that Russians can handle the economic pinch as he doubles down on his war aims of Ukraine's capitulation.
"Putin already said that the war is not free; it is costly," said Guriev, the dean of London Business School and a prominent Kremlin critic. "He will use this result as confirmation that Russians are happy to tighten their belts." There has been speculation over whether the election will be followed by a mobilization of hundreds of thousands of troops, as warned by Kyiv, to replenish Moscow's losses in Ukraine, which number up to 1,000 a day, according to Kyiv and Western estimates. The Kremlin has denied any imminent draft.
But following a botched partial mobilization in September 2022, it has built digital infrastructure to ease the calling up of troops and tightening potential escape routes. Bloomberg reported last week that Russian officials are trying to move assets abroad and encouraging friends and relatives to leave Russia, fearful that their high status would not save them from the front line. Guriev said that given Russia's growing budget deficit and record military spending, it would be cheaper for Putin to draft soldiers by force, and this is a risk he may soon have to weigh up.
"There is a political cost to the mobilization and then there is economic cost in hiring a mercenary army," Guriev said, adding that Putin "needs to compare the political cost, and he may actually interpret this vote as saying actually Russians are OK [with a draft]." This may not be the case, "but he may be misinformed" about the true level of support he has, Guriev continued. Yabloko, the anti-war party that was initially allowed to run, was excluded from running by Russia's Supreme Court because of alleged violations of election campaigning rules, sparking accusations of the election being neither free nor fair. United Russia gained 8 percentage points more of the vote than in 2021, and the official turnout reached almost 60 percent, the highest for parliamentary elections since 2003.
Russia analyst Farida Rustamova said on Telegram that this turnout was "completely unrealistic" given the nonexistent election campaign, with parties not engaging in serious campaigning. She said that five years into the war, the Kremlin wants a parliament "as controllable as possible, in case of any unforeseen developments—such as the war ending or, conversely, escalating." United Russia is set to enter the Duma along with four other parties, according to the results—which are expected to be finalized this week. The second biggest party in the 450-seat lower house, according to projections, will be the Communist Party with 40 seats.
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