Why is Russian government still afraid of elections?

Ahead of the 2026 State Duma elections, Russian authorities are changing the boundaries of single-mandate constituencies. It seems that after 25 years of undermining the electoral process, the Kremlin should not be concerned about the outcome, yet it is.

The government claims that the redistricting is necessary to ensure better representation of different population groups in parliament. In practice, however, these actions lead to rural residents, who are more likely to vote for the ruling party, playing a decisive role in the elections. As a result, most seats in the State Duma are won by deputies from ruling party United Russia. This is just one example of how the authorities use administrative resources.

7x7 recounts how Putin’s regime spent years developing and implementing mechanisms to counter the opposition and control elections — and why they still don't always work. REM publishes an abridged translation of the original article.

Redistricting: Depriving Urban Class of Agency

The decision to alter the boundaries of single-mandate constituencies was adopted by the Russian Central Election Commission (CEC) in April 2025. This move was primarily motivated by the CEC’s intent to allocate seats in the State Duma to representatives of the territories of Ukraine occupied by Russia.

According to the map published by CEC, the primary revisions involve the inclusion of the occupied territories of Ukraine:

- The so-called Donetsk People’s Republic will have 3 districts;

- The Luhansk People’s Republic – 2 districts;

- Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions – 1 district each.

Apart from that, the following districts will be enlarged due to population growth:

- Moscow will gain one additional district, bringing the total to 17;

- Moscow Oblast, which now has 12 districts, will gain one more;

- Krasnodar Krai will grow from 8 to 9 districts.

As the total number of districts remains 225, several regions will lose representation:

- Rostov Oblast will go from 7 to 6;

- Volgograd, Voronezh, and Altai Krai will go down from 4 to 3 each;

- Zabaykalsky Krai, Ivanovo, Kaluga, Smolensk, Tambov, and Tomsk Oblasts will now have 1 district each instead of 2.

Analysts previously noted that the regions gaining districts are mostly Kremlin-loyal, while those losing seats tend to be more opposition-leaning. The redistricting is seen as a strategic move by the Kremlin to reduce electoral risks in the September 2026 vote.

One of those affected by the redistricting is Maria Prusakova, a State Duma deputy from the Altai Krai. During the 2024 presidential election, she publicly criticized the three-day voting system. Prusakova, who heads the Altai Regional Committee of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, secured 27.2% of the vote in her district during the 2021 State Duma elections, while her main opponent from United Russia received 22.25%.

In the 2026 State Duma elections, Prusakova may lose her seat, as the authorities are redrawing the electoral boundaries in Altai Krai, reducing the number of districts from four to three.

Redistricting is the process of changing the boundaries of electoral districts. It is typically driven by population shifts caused by urbanization: rural villages are becoming depopulated, while urban areas continue to grow. In modern Russian history, this is not the first time electoral boundaries have been redrawn, not only due to demographic changes, but also because of the annexation of occupied territories in eastern Ukraine. After 2014, parliamentary seats had to be allocated to Crimea and Sevastopol, and now to four additional “new territories”, as they are referred to in official Russian discourse.

It is understood that electoral districts must be redrawn to ensure that each contains approximately the same number of voters. In theory, this helps prevent situations in which the interests of one segment of the population are disproportionately represented compared to others.

In Russia, the redistricting of constituencies for State Duma elections occurs once every ten years. While constituencies are supposed to be roughly equal in population size, achieving this balance is challenging due to the country’s vast and unevenly populated territory. Each region must have at least one constituency, which leads to significant disparities. For example, the Chukotka constituency includes only about 50,000 voters, whereas districts in more densely populated regions can contain up to 700,000. On average, one State Duma constituency in Russia represents around 500,000 people.

Authorities can use redistricting as a tool to influence electoral outcomes. According to Dmitry Loboyko, head of the Regional Studies Center, redrawing district boundaries often serves to create favorable conditions “for the people who are supposed to win there”. One common tactic is the so-called “petal” redistricting, which involves combining a city with surrounding rural areas into a single-member district, diluting the urban vote with more predictable rural support.

In urban areas, the middle class constitutes a significant portion of the population — it tends to be more independent and may support opposition candidates. To counter this, authorities redraw districts to include nearby rural areas or working-class suburbs — effectively “diluting” the opposition vote with constituencies seen as more loyal to the government. Political strategists then deploy administrative resources to mobilize these voters, sometimes pressuring them to support the preferred candidate. Meanwhile, little to no campaigning is done in the cities. Instead, tactics such as negative messaging and black PR are used to discourage urban residents from voting at all.

“The urban electorate is a problem for the authorities, as it tends to support United Russia significantly less than other segments of the population”, Stanislav Andreychuk, co-chair of the Movement for Defence of Voters' Rights 'Golos', told 7x7. “Redistricting helps the authorities deprive the urban class of political agency. Merged with the rural population, it ends up unrepresented in parliament. The redistricting does not determine the exact percentage of votes for each candidate, but it does predetermine the outcome. If the constituencies had been divided differently, we would have had a completely different parliament, with less representation for United Russia”.

According to Andreychuk, only 30 of the 225 single-member districts in Russia can be classified as predominantly urban. These urban districts are mostly found in major cities such as Moscow, St. Petersburg, Krasnodar, and Novosibirsk. Because of their high population density and geographical layout, it is more difficult for the authorities to redraw the boundaries of these districts to dilute the urban vote.

Many opposition deputies facing the loss of their constituencies due to redistricting are unwilling to concede defeat. Instead, they are preparing to contest seats in newly reconfigured districts. Maria Prusakova of the Altai branch of the Communist Party plans to run in the neighboring Biysk constituency. Other members of the systemic opposition are also planning to contest seats in new constituencies, including Sergei Leonov from the Liberal Democratic Party (LDPRRead Term in glossary) in Smolensk, and Yuri Grigoriev from A Just Russia — For Truth in Transbaikalia.

The redistricting of constituencies — much like deploying spoiler candidates — is a common tactic to manipulate election results, but it is by no means the only one. The system of restrictions has been taking shape over time. Here's how it developed.

2003–2007: Abolition of Direct Gubernatorial Elections

Vladimir Putin’s first two presidential terms were marked by the consolidation of a centralized political hierarchy. A key milestone in this process was the campaign against the regional elite, which culminated in the 2004 abolition of direct gubernatorial elections. Regional leaders were effectively transformed from independent political actors into administrative managers tasked with implementing the federal agenda.

The shift to appointed governors paved the way for United Russia to establish a political monopoly in the regions. The share of votes received by the ruling party became a de facto measure of local officials’ loyalty to the federal center. Eager to retain their positions, governors began using all available means to deliver the desired election results.

2008–2011: Opposition Learns to Negotiate

Opposition parties were allowed limited representation in regional parliaments, on a quota basis and in coordination with local authorities. It was during this period that “systemic opposition” took shape — parties that mimicked political competition while operating within boundaries set by the Kremlin.

2012–2018: ‘Municipal filter’ for election nominations

Gubernatorial elections were formally reinstated in 2012, but they returned with a built-in barrier: the so-called ‘municipal filter’, which effectively turned regional races into contests with predetermined outcomes. The municipal filter requires candidates to gather signatures from the heads of municipalities and local deputies, who are mostly members of United Russia. As a result, the municipal filter prevented many independent candidates from even entering the race.

“The problem was partly with the opposition parties themselves,” says Stanislav Andreychuk. “In some regions, they are so weak that they do not participate in local elections and, accordingly, do not have the mandates to overcome the municipal filter. Even the CPRF [Communist Party of the Russian Federation - REM] is barely active at the local level.”

2019–2021: Debut of e-voting and three-day elections

The Kremlin came to understand that, despite the constraints it had designed, the opposition was still finding ways to enter the political arena. During the 2017 municipal elections in Moscow, opposition candidates secured a majority of seats in district councils — a symbolic but significant breakthrough. A year later, United Russia suffered unexpected defeats in four gubernatorial races. In Khabarovsk Krai, Sergei Furgal of the LDPR won the governorship. Vladimir Sipyagin, also from the LDPR, was elected governor of Vladimir Oblast. In Khakassia, CPRF candidate Valentin Konovalov claimed victory. In Primorsky Krai, CPRF candidate Andrei Ishchenko won in the second round — only for the election commission to annul the results and schedule a new vote, this time without Ishchenko on the ballot.

“The authorities wanted to legally formalize changes they saw as essential to their political survival,” explains Stanislav Andreychuk. “That’s how the idea of a constitutional referendum came about”.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Central Election Commission introduced multi-day voting — an experiment that, according to Andreychuk, marked a turning point in the Russian electoral system:

“The constitutional amendment vote was the most consequential in the past 30 years. The Kremlin saw an opportunity to carry it out entirely on its own terms, using COVID-related restrictions as a pretext. That gave officials the green light: if multi-day voting could be implemented for a constitutional referendum, what would prevent them from using the same tactics in future elections? From that point on, the system began to unravel.”

During the 2020 constitutional referendum, the authorities introduced remote electronic voting (REV) for the first time, using Moscow and Nizhny Novgorod as testing grounds for the new technology. By the 2021 State Duma elections, REV had expanded to the Kursk, Yaroslavl, Murmansk, and Rostov regions. In Moscow, the results of e-voting at some polling stations differed sharply from the paper ballot counts at the same locations — ultimately securing victory for the United Russia party.

2022–2025: Crackdown on Opposition

Following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Russian government began a decisive crackdown on the opposition, marked by the criminal prosecution of activists across the country. Almost all supporters of the opposition either fled the country or faced intense administrative pressure. At the same time, the authorities began blocking independent media websites.

“Our elections were never perfect”, Andreychuk concludes. “But in the 1990s and early 2000s, they were still competitive. There were irregularities, yes — but the outcomes were largely unpredictable. Fraud existed, but not on the scale we see today. The government did use administrative resources, but they were divided among different political forces. Bribery happened, but paradoxically, anyone could participate in it — not just the ruling party. Today, all of these tools of electoral manipulation are used exclusively in favor of United Russia.”

The more control, the greater the anxiety

In 2023, Alexander Gliskov, a member of the Krasnoyarsk Krai Legislative Assembly from the LDPR, ran for governor. At the time, he publicly accused United Russia of blocking candidates from other parties from getting on the ballot. To qualify for the race, candidates were required to pass the ‘municipal filter’, collecting 280 signatures from local deputies and heads of municipalities. According to Gliskov, United Russia pressured these officials to sign only in support of the incumbent governor, who was a member of the ruling party.

Alexander Gliskov ultimately made it onto the ballot and finished second in the election, securing 11.32% of the vote — a rare result for an LDPR candidate in Siberia. Just a month after the gubernatorial race, Gliskov was arrested on suspicion of accepting a bribe of 1 million rubles. In October 2024, he was found guilty and sentenced to ten years in a strict-regime penal colony, fined 10 million rubles, and barred from holding elected office for eight years. LDPR chairman Leonid Slutsky suggested that Gliskov’s arrest may have been politically motivated. Gliskov did not acknowledge his guilt [though, reportedly, he asked investigators to allow him to join the war effort in Ukraine - REM].

Opposition candidates holding high-ranking positions in Russian politics, such as governorships, are indeed rare today, though not entirely extinct. Each such instance presents a significant challenge to the authorities, serving as clear evidence that segments of the population may be unwilling to support United Russia.

“If you control the rules of the game — redraw constituencies at will, change electoral legislation — you’ll never lose”, Loboyko explained. “But even under such conditions, the authorities sometimes cannot suppress the public's desire to see someone genuinely popular elected as governor or deputy. And here lies the paradox: the more control the authorities exert — and they currently have a great deal — the greater their anxiety becomes. That’s why they keep introducing new restrictive measures during elections. At the same time, the Russian authorities continue to present a façade of electoral democracy. Since they cannot simply manufacture the desired outcome, they instead seek to legally constrain the electoral process in order to secure victory.”

Sociologist Grigory Yudin explains the Russian authorities’ continued insistence on holding elections, despite their entirely predictable outcomes, as a defining feature of the plebiscitary regime that has taken shape in the country. In this system, elections and other forms of voting, such as referendums and polls, function primarily to legitimize and affirm the actions of the state:

“In such a regime, a monarch rules while claiming to be backed by the will of the people. This means that all participants — candidates, election officials, and voters alike — understand that the outcome is predetermined. Their role is to express support for the winner. It is this display of support that grants the ‘emperor’ legitimacy. It makes no difference whether he appears on the ballot personally or whether the name of a party associated with him is listed instead”.

Yudin argues that, for the Russian authorities, elections are a ritual. Through such rituals, individuals and institutions gain a certain status. Hence, the regime’s serious and deliberate approach to voting:

“Organizers and voters are subjected to a form of systematic coercion that instills the sense that the system imposing it is omnipotent,” Yudin explains. “It begins with meetings at the presidential administration, where regional officials are presented with polling data and told that any doubts about the outcome are pointless. They are then assigned specific targets for the percentage of votes the preferred candidate must receive. These targets are passed down to state institutions and businesses affiliated with the state, who, in turn, deliver the same message to their employees. By the time voters arrive at the polls, they understand that their role is to collectively affirm their recognition of the ‘tsar’. This is how loyalty is manufactured. If the results were simply fabricated outright, it would constitute an entirely different political regime — one built on a fundamentally different structure of legitimacy”.

The government's primary objective is to prevent opposition candidates from securing key positions, which is why the Kremlin introduces new restrictions with each new election. This marks a turning point in Russia’s political history, with the primary struggle for power now increasingly centered within the United Russia party itself.

“If by opposition politics we understand a genuine struggle for power in the regions — rather than journalism or dissidence — then this struggle is real. However, it is being waged by individuals with significant resources,” adds political scientist Dmitry Loboyko. “Typically, these individuals are not affiliated with the Communist Party, the Liberal Democratic Party, Just Russia, and most certainly, they are not in exile. Instead, they are firmly entrenched within the regional political councils of United Russia”.

Unless radical changes occur within the Russian regime, the true political struggle in the years ahead will likely unfold within the regional political councils of United Russia. This dynamic is certainly worth the attention of those who follow Russian politics.