Election update XVI
14.06.2026
Russia is preparing for the State Duma vote. The newly appointed Central Election Commission (CEC) has announced that the voting will span three days — a norm in Russian elections since the COVID-19 pandemic — from 18 to 20 September 2026. The dates will be formally confirmed in the coming days.
Alongside the national State Duma elections, eight regions will hold gubernatorial votes, three regions will see their new governors chosen by regional parliaments, 39 regions will elect new regional parliaments, and nine regional capitals will form new city councils.
On one hand, the ruling party is preparing for the elections in a "calm mode". On the other hand, the Kremlin continues to intensify pressure on the systemic opposition, targeting primarily the Yabloko party, which is campaigning on anti-war slogans, as well as the CPRF.
The next step of the campaign will be candidate nomination, with party congresses scheduled for June, followed by candidate registration.
In this digest, REM summarizes the latest developments of the unfolding campaign, including the results of party primaries, pressure on the systemic opposition, and new restrictive legislation.
1. Parties ahead of the State Duma "Elections"
1.1. United Russia primaries: Coercion to vote and new faces
Between 19,000 and 20,000 candidates registered for the ruling party’s primaries, including approximately 5,000 seeking nomination for the State Duma. This correspondes to roughly 12 candidates per seat in the State Duma and seven candidates per seat in the regional legislatures.
In contrast to 2021, this year’s primaries were conducted exclusively online.
Among all primary participants, around 1,300 individuals (6.5%) identified themselves as "veterans" of Russia's war against Ukraine. Fewer than half of them sought nomination to the State Duma. Under the new rules, the results of war participants were automatically boosted by 25%.
United Russia claimed that more than 12 million citizens participated in voting for party delegates. According to reports from across Russia, such a high turnout is attributed, among other factors, to pressure on public-sector employees and students, who were initially required only to register on the voting platform. Later, many were reportedly instructed to vote, in some cases for specific candidates. State institutions and educational organizations circulated guidelines on how to vote “correctly”.
Despite the Kremlin’s efforts to push war veterans into politics, only 58 candidates secured victories in the United Russia primaries. This represents less than 10% of those who sought nomination through the primaries mechanism.
Of the 58 winners, 32 are expected to run in single-member constituencies; the rest will be included on party lists. The largest concentrations of successful veteran candidates were recorded in Moscow, the so-called Donetsk People's Republic, the Novosibirsk region, and Chechnya.
Remarkably, not all acting United Russia MPs participated in the primaries. Out of 311 incumbent State Duma deputies, only 239 submitted applications for the primaries. This suggests that at least 25% of the faction in the State Duma could be renewed. When it comes to regional and local legislatures, the percentage is higher – about 40%.
The final list of candidates will be approved at the United Russia’s party congress scheduled for late June.
1.2. CPRF primaries: No surpises
For the first time ever, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF) held primaries. The party launched the “People’s Candidate” platform, where voters could select candidates and submit feedback and policy proposals. The platform featured 230 candidates for a total of 225 single-member districts, indicating that the primaries offered little meaningful competition.
The CPRF featured way fewer “war veterans” compared to the United Russia: only 11 participants in Russia’s war in Ukraine took part in the primaries. Only two are leading in their single-member districts. One of them is Vitaly Narizhny, former prosecutor of the so-called Luhansk Peoples’ Republic. The other one is Anton Shilov, local deputy from Ulyanovsk.
Around 2,5 million voters took part in the Communist Party’s primaries. Of these, about 100,000 votes were cast online, while over 2 million were cast using paper ballots.
The top three finishers among the 230 candidates were State Duma deputies Mikhail Matveev from the Samara region, Oleg Mikhaylov from the Komi Republic, and Sergei Obukhov from Moscow.
The results will be reviewed by the personnel commission, the presidium, and the plenum of the CPRF Central Committee, with the final list of candidates for the State Duma elections to be approved at the party congress scheduled for 20 June.
According to the party’s spokesperson, around 20% of the incumbent State Duma deputies from CPRF will be renewed.
1.3. Pressure on systemic opposition: Yabloko and CPRF
The Yabloko party, which has announced that it will contest the State Duma elections under the slogan "For Peace and Freedom! For Life Without Fear!", has faced mounting pressure against its candidates in regions where the party maintains a strong presence and where elections will take place in September 2026.
In most cases, incumbent deputies in regional and local parliaments, as well as other prospective candidates, are being pushed out of the electoral race through accusations of "displaying extremist symbols". Under current Russian law, individuals found guilty under "extremist" legislation are barred from running for office for one year. The accusations against Yabloko politicians are based on old social media posts containing pictures of Alexey Navalny, whom the Russian authorities continue to label as an "extremist" even after his death in February 2024.
The list of Yabloko politicians who have been pubnished and barred from running is extensive. It includes party chair Nikolai Rybakov; Artur Gaiduk (a deputy in the Pskov Regional Assembly); Tatyana Fedorova (a former member of the Pskov City Council); Svetlana Vasilkova (vice chair of the Pskov regional branch); Olga Shtannikova (a deputy in the Saint Petersburg Legislative Assembly); Alexander Shishlov (former chair of the Yabloko faction in the Saint Petersburg Legislative Assembly); Elena Ivanova (deputy chair of the Novgorod regional branch); party member Anton Kostryukov; Emilia Slabunova (a deputy in the Karelian parliament and chair of the regional branch); and Dmitry Rybakov (a deputy in the Petrozavodsk City Council).
In Moscow, Yabloko deputy chair Maxim Kruglov remains in custody on charges related to the alledged “dissemination of fake news” about the Russian army. Similar cases have emerged across the country, including in Vladivostok, Novgorod, Ryazan, and Pskov, where a polular politician Lev Shlosberg is facing yet another criminal case.
In total, 32 Yabloko members have been barred from participating in the upcoming 2026 elections under various “legal” provisions introduced by the Russian government following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Repression against Yabloko have resulted in 58 politicians being fined (including 36 for “discrediting the army”), 34 subjected to searches and raids in five regional offices, 29 detained, 13 under criminal persecution, 11 jailed under administrative arrest, six behind bars, and 10 labeled “foreign agents”.
Unsurprisingly, given these circumstances, Yabloko still lacks a confirmed lead candidate. Nikolai Rybakov, who headed the party list in 2021, is now barred from running following a court ruling against him for displaying “extremist symbols”. Grigory Yavlinsky, one of the party’s founders and its longtime leader, is hesitating to run for the State Duma elections.
Another party facing pressure ahead of the elections is the CPRF. In the Altai region, several party members have been detained. In November 2025, deputy Lyudmila Klyushnikova and her aide Svetlana Kerber were arrested on fraud charges. In February 2026, two more deputies, Andrey Chernobay and Yury Kropotin, were detained. In April 2026, police detained Anna Yartseva, an aide to regional deputy Igor Galkin. Later, regional branch secretary Vitaly Buldakov and former chief accountant Natalya Chistokletova were charged with various criminal offenses.
Recently, two CPRF members from the Omsk region were barred from running in elections for “displaying extremist symbols” — Vladimir Vinichenko, a deputy in the regional parliament, and Ivan Fedin, secretary of the CPRF Omsk branch. The court found them guilty over a photograph taken at a 2019 protest against Facebook. Meta Platforms, Facebook’s parent company, was designated an “extremist organization” and banned in Russia in 2022.
Both the Altai and Omsk regions are set to hold regional parliamentary elections in September 2026.
1.4. Non-systemic opposition
The Dawn (Rassvet in Russian) party, led by former presidential candidate Ekaterina Duntsova, also intends to participate in the State Duma elections, despite having twice been denied registration by the Ministry of Justice. The party has announced its first candidates: Denis Malyshev, an IT entrepreneur from Ufa; Angelika Zueva, a doctor from the Tver region; and Anton Isakov, an engineer from Tomsk.
Duntsova has stated that the party aims to nominate candidates in all single-member districts across Russia. Candidates will be campaigning under the slogans of peace, progress, and freedom. However, the chances of Rassvet securing registration from the Ministry of Justice this time appear slim.
Another former presidential candidate, Boris Nadezhdin, also intends to run for a seat in the State Duma. He has unveiled his campaign slogan: "Peace. Development. Fair elections. Strong cities".
2. Election commission purges and new restrictive legislation
2.1. “New” CEC: Old members plus a war criminal and a fake observer
Earlier this year, Russia’s Central Election Commission began work in its "renewed" composition, although its key leadership positions remain unchanged. The Commission reappointed Ella Pamfilova as chair, Nikolai Bulaev as deputy chair, and Natalia Budarina as secretary.
The new CEC lineup has only three newcomers. These are Anatoly Sysoev, a 49-year-old veteran of the war in Ukraine and former aide to the Tver region governor; Vasilina Kulieva, a State Duma deputy from the LDPR; and Alena Bulgakova, one of the key figures behind Russia’s state-aligned election monitoring system. Bulgakova was appointed to the CEC as a representative of the New People party.
Alena Bulgakova heads the movement Corps for Clean Elections and serves as executive director of the Association of Independent Public Monitoring (NOM). Both organizations are widely viewed as GONGOs whose role during elections is to deploy thousands of loyal observers to polling stations. These observers are expected to publicly report that no violations were recorded, thereby reinforcing official narratives about the integrity of the vote.
Bulgakova has also been a vocal advocate of the remote electronic voting and a proponent of the concept of “electoral sovereignty” — a doctrine used by the Russian authorities to justify tighter control over elections.
2.2. No opposition in territorial commissions
Representatives of Yabloko, the CPRF, and Just Russia have reported the mass exclusion of their nominees from territorial election commissions (TECs) across multiple regions.
Among the three parties, Yabloko has faced the most severe restrictions. In Moscow, for the first time in 33 years, the party will have no representatives in any of the city’s 127 TECs. In Karelia, one of Yabloko’s strongholds, only two of its 13 nominees were approved. The party has also reported rejections in the Saratov region and Tatarstan. In many cases, the seats instead went to parliamentary or pro-government parties and little-known civic groups.
In the Orenburg region, election authorities approved CPRF nominees in only five out of the 28 TECs, meaning that more than 80% of the commissions will have no CPRF members, although the party had submitted candidates for every single commission.
The party Just Russia reported similar barriers in Kamchatka and in one district of the Kirov region.
TECs are a vital tier of Russia’s electoral system. They handle complaints against precinct election commissions and have the authority to respond to electoral violations. With more than 2,500 TECs nationwide, being represented in these bodies is crucial for any party seeking meaningful oversight of the electoral process.
2.3. Restrictions on campaigning disadvantage opposition
Russian authorities have banned the use of images of deceased individuals, as well as fictional and AI-generated characters, in election campaigning. The measure is widely seen as a targeted restriction affecting systemic opposition parties, particularly the CPRF and the LDPR.
The ban deprives the CPRF of one of its most effective mobilization tools: the images of Joseph Stalin and Vladimir Lenin, which have long helped rally the party’s electorate. For the LDPR, the ban means losing the ability to campaign using the image of its founder, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, who remains a highly popular figure among the party’s electorate even after his death in 2022.
These legislative amendments were inspired by lawmakers from the United Russia, LDPR, Just Russia, and New People. No CPRF lawmakers were among the bill’s authors. The Communists have long defended the use of AI in election campaigning and have even challenged the restrictions at the Supreme Court, albeit unsuccessfully.
Finally, the ban does not extend to the use of images of active politicians, provided their consent is obtained. Consequently, the United Russia retains the ability to use Vladimir Putin's image in its campaigning for as long as he remains alive.
