Putin’s United Russia wins landslide as 49 Ukraine war veterans enter parliament

Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party has won a record majority in Russia’s parliament, with 49 veterans of the war in Ukraine elected as deputies, officials said.

According to The Guardian, preliminary results showed the pro-Kremlin party winning 355 of the 450 seats in the State Duma, surpassing its previous record of 343 seats in 2016.

Russia’s election chief Ella Pamfilova said United Russia received 57.83 percent of the vote with 95 percent of ballots counted, up from 49.8 percent in the 2021 parliamentary election.

United Russia general secretary Vladimir Yakushev said 49 veterans of what Moscow calls its “special military operation” had been elected.

Putin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said the results demonstrated public support for the Russian leader.

“These indicators, of course, point to the highest level of consolidation within Russian society around the head of state,” Peskov said.

Western governments criticised voting held in Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine as a “sham”.

Russia’s supreme court had also barred Yabloko, the only participating party opposed to the war, from the election last month.

EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas called the vote “another major setback for Russian democracy”.

Other parties winning seats, including the Communist Party, LDPR and New People, also support Russia’s military campaign in Ukraine.

The vote was Russia’s first parliamentary election since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.