Moscow cries fraud abroad while fixing the vote at home
Moscow routinely portrays elections in democratic countries as fraudulent and controlled from abroad. Yet Russia’s own parliamentary election offers no genuine political choice: the Kremlin controls the field and has eliminated even the possibility of voting against the war in Ukraine. As the war’s effects reach deeper into everyday life, growing public dissatisfaction is being kept out of the ballot box.
When post-Soviet states turn away from Russia, as Armenia or Moldova have done, Kremlin officials and aligned outlets usually blame Western interference. Yet Moscow has itself tries to influence elections through foreign information manipulation and interference (FIMI), often alongside financial support for pro-Russian groups. Moldovan authorities say Russian agents spent about €200 million – nearly 1% of Moldova’s GDP – on vote-buying and disinformation during the country’s 2024 presidential election and EU referendum. Investigators later found that the sanctioned Russian organisation Evrazia had used similar tactics ahead of Armenia’s 2026 election. Moscow nevertheless portrayed EU assistance intended to counter such threats as election interference.
The Kremlin also regularly portrays established Western democracies as vulnerable to election manipulation. Posters currently displayed in the Moscow metro claim that journalists are barred from polling stations in Austria and Canada and that 42 of the 50 US states have no election monitoring. These claims are misleading: restrictions on journalists do not exclude authorised observers or party representatives, while almost every US state permits some form of public or partisan observation. The aim is to suggest that fair elections do not exist, so that any evidence of fraud in Russia could be dismissed as normal practice elsewhere.
Unfair elections? Look no further than Russia
Independent analysts agree that in Russia, election results have long been predetermined: the Kremlin controls every step, from candidate selection to ballot stuffing and vote counting. International observers, domestic monitoring groups and researchers have documented extensive manipulation in every State Duma election since 2011. The Center for Data and Research on Russia (CEDAR), an independent think tank, found evidence of widespread ballot manipulation across 12 federal elections held between 2000 and 2024. Golos, a Russian independent election monitoring group, recorded 1,057 alleged violations during the 2024 presidential election, including reports from more than 60 regions of voters being pressured or monitored by their employers. (Golos has since been labelled “foreign agent” and forced to cease its activities in Russia, and independent international observers such as the OSCE cannot observe the elections either.) The comparison with EU elections is stark: Freedom House’s 2026 assessment gave Russia 0 out of 12(opens in a new tab) for its electoral process, compared with 7 for Hungary and 12 for Finland.
A vote for Putin, a vote for war
Russia’s 2026 parliamentary election is the first since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, presenting the Kremlin with a new challenge. Putin’s regime has long offered stability in exchange for political passivity, but that bargain is cracking. Putin’s policies have scared foreign investors away and the outlook for Russia and ordinary citizens is bleak. In recent months, Ukrainian drone attacks on refineries, ports, oil depots and e-commerce warehouses have caused fuel shortages and economic disruption; Putin himself acknowledged in September that they had inflicted “real damage” on Russia’s economy. Rumours that another mass mobilisation could follow the election have added to public anxiety, suggesting that an unpopular decision might have been postponed to protect Putin’s party United Russia at the polls. Meanwhile, renewed peace efforts are colliding with Putin’s refusal to end the war despite its mounting costs.
At United Russia’s recent party congress, Putin described the “special military operation” as “particularly, exceptionally important” and said that the party’s duty was “to do everything for victory.” His message was clear: a vote for United Russia is a vote for Putin and for continuing the war. But it is far from clear that this is what most Russians actually want. Polls conducted by the independent Levada centre since 2022 has shown steadily growing support for peace negotiations, while more than half of respondents say that the war has affected their lives. In these circumstances, calls for peace become an electoral threat, and the authorities are responding by denying anti-war voters political representation.
The Kremlin is therefore disqualifying or pressuring every candidate and party capable of offering a “vote for peace.” Leading opposition figures are dead, imprisoned or exiled: Alexei Navalny was slowly murdered in prison after years of persecution, while Mikhail Khodorkovsky was forced abroad. Only a nominal opposition remains, consisting largely of politicians who tried to work within the Kremlin’s tightening rules. Ahead of the election, even they became targets.
Peace has no place in the ballot
Yabloko remained Russia’s only registered party openly opposed to the war. It condemned the 2022 invasion as “the gravest crime”, saying that it betrayed Russia’s national interests and destroyed its future, and later called for an unconditional ceasefire.
For years, Yabloko remained a small party, receiving just over 1% of the vote in the 2021 election. By March 2026, Yabloko was polling at 3%. Yet the authorities decided that allowing it to campaign under the slogan “For peace and freedom!” was too great a risk. In early August, the Supreme Court removed Yabloko’s federal candidate list from the ballot after a lawsuit by the nationalist Rodina party. The decision was upheld on appeal.
According to Meduza, the Rodina-party portrayed Yabloko’s calls for a ceasefire as extremist and a threat to Russia’s territorial integrity. Yet the court ultimately disqualified the party for copyright infringement after it used a famous Soviet peace song, avoiding a direct ruling on its anti-war position.
Shortly afterwards, Yabloko deputy chair Lev Shlosberg was sentenced to 11 years in prison for “repeatedly discrediting the Russian Armed Forces” after joining an online debate about the war, and sharing a caricature on Putin, based on a law that at the time did not even exist yet. Another deputy chair, Maxim Kruglov, was sentenced to seven years for spreading “false information” about the military. Both offences were introduced after the invasion and have been widely used to prosecute public discussion of Russian war crimes.
Boris Nadezhdin, a Russian anti-war politician, opposed the invasion and made ending the war the focus of his attempted 2024 presidential campaign, although his 2026 parliamentary platform proposed negotiating the status of the occupied territories rather than returning them unconditionally to Ukraine. Despite this cautious position, the Justice Ministry designated him a “foreign agent” – a label widely used against political opponents that also barred him from standing for election. The authorities separately disqualified him under laws against extremist symbols because of a 2023 post linked to a livestream in which Alexei Navalny’s photograph appeared for about 10 seconds; facing further persecution, Nadezhdin later left Russia.
Other tricks up the Kremlin’s sleeve
The authorities are using additional methods to shape the result, including redrawing constituency boundaries, holding voting over three days and expanding remote electronic voting to about half of Russia’s regions – measures that analysts say make the process harder to monitor.
The Kremlin is also deliberately suppressing voter turnout, according to political analyst Alexander Kynev. Pro-government parties run deliberately low-key campaigns. Municipal deputy Samson Sholademi, who runs a Telegram channel covering the elections, noted that four weeks before the campaign ended, many candidates in Moscow’s single-member constituencies had virtually no money in their campaign accounts. Such campaigns encourage disengaged or dissatisfied citizens to stay home, while reliable voters are mobilised through workplaces and state institutions. Many of voters in state or public institutions will likely also be coerced to vote and document “the right” vote and fulfil a certain quota. It is not uncommon that workers are asked to present photo documentation to their superiors to avoid negative consequences.
Electoral manipulation in Russia is now going further than ever, eliminating genuine choice before voting even begins by denying peace the slightest chance. In previous years, nominal opposition parties were allowed to serve as an outlet for public frustration. Now, in the service of war, even this narrow space for dissent is being closed.
Article first time published on the EUvsDisinfo web page. Prepared for publication by volunteers from the Res Publica - The Center for Civil Resistance.
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