Kremlin-backed candidates win regional elections in Russia

All fourteen Russian governors standing for re-election in the local elections held over the last few days in Russia have won re-election, while the ruling United Russia party maintains control of the majority of regional parliaments.

Of the total, twelve of the governors were running as independents, although they were supported by United Russia, which has also won more than 1,100 of the 1,400 representatives in the municipal elections in the capital, as reported by the Russian news agency TASS.

“The data are being processed. According to the protocols received, most of the mandates, more than 1,100, have gone to United Russia candidates. The rest have been distributed among representatives of other parties, social movements and independent candidates,” the Election Observation Headquarters in Moscow said.

The election of Moscow deputies kicked off on Friday and concluded on Sunday, an election in which there were more than 5,700 candidates for a total of 1,417 seats in the councils of the capital’s 125 districts, a process conducted in parallel with voting in more than 80 regions.

The deputy chairman of the Central Election Commission (CEC), Nikolai Bulayev, stressed that the elections had been settled without incidents requiring “immediate or proactive interference,” while the head of the Public Order Protection Department within the Interior Ministry, Mikhail Davidov, stressed that no “violations that could affect the elections” had been recorded.

For his part, the leader of United Russia, Dimitri Medvedev, who is also deputy chairman of the Russian Security Council, has stressed that “everything has been in line with the electoral laws”, although he has recognized that “certain episodes might require an investigation”.

In total, more than 45 million people are called to the polls, in an election marked by the invasion of Ukraine, unleashed on February 24 on the orders of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Opponents have faced increasing pressure and those who have spoken out against the invasion have been removed from the electoral race, as reported by the German news agency DPA.