Russia began a three-day parliamentary election on Friday, with polling stations opening first in the Far East before progressing through the country's eleven time zones. President Vladimir Putin's United Russia party is all but certain to win the vote for the 450 Duma seats, the first such election since the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The Kremlin has structured the contest to ensure this outcome: only parties that support Putin and his military campaign have been permitted to register, whilst opposition parties calling for an end to the war have been barred and their leaders imprisoned or exiled. The election serves as a barometer for the Kremlin to measure public support for the conflict, which has now killed hundreds of thousands and intensified its impact on ordinary Russians this year.

The vote comes amid tightened control over public discourse—Moscow has banned criticism of its Ukraine campaign, prevented public debates and prohibited protests. Anti-war opposition party Yabloko was blocked from standing shortly before the election, and one of its figures, Lev Shlosberg, was imprisoned for criticising the war. Meanwhile, Putin, who has ruled Russia since 1999, called on voters to demonstrate that "millions of people" stand behind Russian troops. The war has caused billions of roubles in damage from Ukrainian strikes reaching deep into Russian territory, isolated Russia from the West through economic sanctions, and driven most political opponents into exile or imprisonment, including Putin's former main challenger Alexei Navalny, who died in an Arctic prison in 2024.