Although few doubt that President Vladimir Putin’s party will win again, the vote will serve as a barometer for assessing attitudes toward the war, which has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives and harmed the daily lives of Russians.
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“From 8 p.m. on September 17 (local and Lithuanian time) until 7 a.m. on September 18, more than 350 drones flew towards the Moscow region,” said Mayor Sergei Sobyanin on the Telegram platform.
“It is reported that most of them were destroyed on the outer defense perimeter, including 64 drones intercepted approaching Moscow,” he said.
V. Putin has ruled Russia since New Year’s Eve 1999, and his party, United Russia, has dominated Russian politics since the beginning of the century.
Moscow has banned criticism of its war in Ukraine, and Russian elections, tightly controlled by the Kremlin, offer few surprises.
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The vote, which will renew 450 seats in the Duma, the lower house of the Russian parliament, will run until 9 p.m. Sunday Moscow (and Lithuanian) time.
Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula and Chukotka – by the Pacific Ocean – are the first of Russia’s 11 time zones to start voting.
Russian political expert Tatiana Stanovaya, working in France, said that V. Putin likes to “compare his political position” with that of European countries.
“So he can always say: look, we had elections. I have such great Russian support,” she told the AFP news agency.
“Therefore, it is very important to him personally, emotionally, politically,” she said.
