The reaction to the elections to the State Duma of the Russian Federation in the occupied Crimea should be sanctions, President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko considers.
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United Russia will now hold an estimated 303 of 450 seats in the Russia’s next parliament when it convenes in October, enough to vote in changes to Russia’s constitution on a strict, party-line vote. Yabloko and Parnas, the two leading parties running on anti-Putin platforms, both failed to get above the 5%, with the early results suggesting that Russia’s parliament would now not have a single openly anti-Putin lawmaker in parliament.
Not everything went Putin’s way though. “Nevertheless, we have this result”.
The victory is also of personal interest to Putin, whose aides are likely to use the result as a springboard for his campaign for re-election in 2018.
As was reported, the NSDC on Friday chose to introduce sanctions against representatives of Russia’s law enforcement agencies and the judiciary over the illegal prosecution of Ukrainian citizens – film director Oleh Sentsov, activist Oleksandr Kolchenko and others.
The Communists won 13.5 percent and the ultranationalist Liberal Democratic Party pulled in 13.3 percent, while A Just Russia received 6.2 percent.
United Russia’s support had appeared to suffer as a result, slumping in recent opinion polls to about 40 percent from 60 percent 18 months ago.
“We are not a Russian island – we are United Russia”, reads a party political ad on a Kaliningrad tram.
“It is obvious that the overwhelming majority of voters in fact expressed their support for the president”.
There were some reports of voting irregularities.
The last parliamentary election in 2011 was marked by widespread allegations of vote fraud, prompting anti-government demonstrations.
As pollsters predicted, turnout was low at around 47 percent. “Why bother?”, said the man, who gave his first name as Ilysh.
Pamfilova admitted there were problems in several regions but said that “the level of transparency was incomparably higher than in the previous electoral campaign”.
The return of an old voting system, under which half, rather than all, deputies were drawn from party lists with the other half decided by people voting for individuals, boosted United Russia’s seats. Through a series of global conflicts – including the annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 that prompted sanctions from the US and its allies and chilled relations – Putin fostered a resurgence in national pride that helped him squash dissent and make the election a confirmation of his rule.
Construction of the Kerch Strait bridge is a national project of exceptional importance, said Russian President Vladimir Putin when opening a State Council Presidium meeting on developing transport infrastructure in the Southern Federal District in Kerch. If he did and won, he would be in power until 2024, longer than Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, the longest-serving Soviet leader aside from Joseph Stalin.
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Three other parties – which made up the last parliament and all back the Kremlin – were the only ones to clear the five-percent threshold needed for representation.
