Russian nationals in Israel are voting at 13 polling stations in the Russian parliamentary elections on Sunday, the Russian embassy in Israel said.
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The nationwide elections follow several years of tumult that have seen the country annex Crimea from Ukraine, lurch into its worst stand-off with the West since the Cold War, plunge into economic crisis and launch a military campaign in Syria.
Despite the dramatic events that have rocked the country, the campaign for the State Duma – widely seen as a rubber-stamp body that has slavishly toed the Kremlin line – was dubbed the most boring in recent memory by observers and high levels of voter apathy suggest that turnout could be low.
Voting started at 2000 GMT on Saturday on the Chukotka Peninsula opposite Alaska.
“I created United Russia as a party, so there is no commentary needed here”, he said when asked by journalists who he is going to vote for.
The party is also able to draw on the support of the other three parties in the federal Duma, and benefits from its association with 63-year-old Putin, who after 17 years in power as either president or prime minister, enjoys a personal approval rating of about 80 percent.
The liberal opposition hopes it can break through to win about two dozen seats. If he did and won, he would be in power until 2024, longer than Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev.
A new State Duma, in contrast to the outgoing one that was formed entirely on party tickets, will be shaped under a mixed pattern: 225 of its members will be elected on the proportionate basis (on party tickets), and another 225 in single-member constituencies.
The Kremlin has tried to assure voters of a clean vote by allowing the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) to monitor the elections and appointed a new head of the country’s election commission.
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Voting for the State Duma began Sunday morning in the Far East, nine hours ahead of Moscow and won’t conclude until 22 hours later when polls close in the Baltic Sea exclave of Kaliningrad. But they also reveal that Putin’s own popularity remains high.
