Putin’s United Russia claims constitutional majority and record-sized faction in new parliament

In the only part of Russia where it was permitted, the anti-war party Yabloko secured seats in the Novgorod Regional Duma following the country's parliamentary elections held from September 18 to 20. According to election commission data, Yabloko garnered 6.2% of the vote, with 96.86% of precinct protocols having been counted by election officials on September 21. The region was the sole location where the party was granted the opportunity to participate in the elections.

Other parties set to enter the regional legislature included United Russia with 38.37%, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation with 14.54%, the Liberal Democratic Party with 12.01%, New People with 9.87%, A Just Russia with 7.7%, and the Party of Pensioners with 5.55%. The Communists of Russia party, distinct from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, failed to surpass the 5% threshold, achieving 3.3% of the vote.

The Novgorod Regional Duma consists of 32 seats, with 20 being elected in single-member districts and the remaining 12 allocated proportionally based on votes cast for the regional party lists.

Yabloko had also applied to participate in elections to seven other regional legislatures, but their party lists were denied registration in St. Petersburg and the Leningrad region. Courts subsequently removed their lists in Karelia and the Kaliningrad, Sverdlovsk, Tomsk, and Pskov regions due to lawsuits filed by other parties.

Moreover, Yabloko was barred from the nationwide election for Russia’s State Duma following a lawsuit filed by the Rodina party, which claimed that Yabloko's usage of photographs depicting the aftermath of the 1945 atomic bombing of Hiroshima infringed upon the U.S. Army's copyright protections.

The party's sole platform was that of anti-war campaigning, under the slogan "For Peace and Freedom." The court ruling that barred their participation cited Yabloko's advertising on blocked social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, X, and YouTube, as well as the receipt of money transfers from abroad. Russian parliamentary candidate campaigning under the slogan "For Peace" disappeared on the eve of the three-day State Duma vote.

At least 36 Russian opposition candidates, more than half of them from Yabloko, were forced out of the upcoming elections. Russian security services were said to have prevailed in their efforts to prevent the anti-war Yabloko party's participation in the elections. Analysts suggested that the Supreme Court's decision to bar Yabloko from the parliamentary election was influenced by these factors.