Russians start three-day Duma vote after Yabloko is removed from the ballot

Voting for Russia’s State Duma opened on Friday in the Far East and will run through Sunday, the first parliamentary election since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Polls started in Kamchatka and Chukotka. About 111 million people are eligible. Authorities spread the ballot over three days and allowed electronic voting to lift turnout.

Voters will fill 450 seats: 225 from party lists and 225 from single-member districts. Eight governorships and dozens of regional legislatures are on the same ballot. For the first time the vote includes the occupied Ukrainian regions that Moscow calls the Donetsk and Luhansk people’s republics and Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, all under martial law. Organisers listed 333 polling stations abroad.

President Vladimir Putin framed the election as a test of support for the war. In a televised address he said a ballot would help secure victory in Ukraine and show national resolve under external pressure. United Russia, the main Kremlin party, is expected to keep its dominant share. More than 70 percent of sitting deputies are seeking another term. Ten parties placed candidates. More than 4,300 names are on the lists, including veterans of the Ukraine campaign.

The liberal Yabloko party, the only registered group that called for a ceasefire, was struck from the party-list ballot in August. The Supreme Court said the anti-war platform amounted to a bid to violate Russia’s territorial integrity, among other grounds. The Central Election Commission had registered the list first. Interest in Yabloko then rose. The court order followed. Some Yabloko candidates remain in single-member races. Courts have removed others.

What Moscow calls the systemic opposition remains on the ballot. The Communist Party, still led by 82-year-old Gennady Zyuganov, criticises parts of government policy and avoids direct attack on Putin. Other registered parties vote with the Kremlin on the war and on the main statutes. That arrangement has defined the Duma for years. This election locks it in for another five-year term while the war continues.

Partial results are due after 1800 GMT on Sunday. Fuller figures are expected Monday. Ella Pamfilova, chair of the Central Election Commission, said an AI assistant named Sashenka would handle public calls around the clock for the first time. The tool is a process story. The structural story is the absence of an anti-war list.

European governments have limited polling on their territory. Russian officials say some states are blocking overseas voting. The more consequential overseas question is the ballot in occupied Ukrainian regions, where martial law is in force and independent observation is not possible in any serious sense.

The Duma does not set military strategy. It does pass the statutes that fund the war, punish dissent and regulate elections themselves. A new majority that looks like the old majority gives the Kremlin a fresh formal mandate without a competitive campaign. That is the point Putin made in public. It is also why Yabloko’s removal matters more than the precise share United Russia records on Monday.

For voters in Vladivostok on Friday morning the choice on the party list did not include the one registered organisation that wanted the fighting stopped. They could still mark a local candidate. They could stay home. They could use the electronic system. None of those options restores a national anti-war ticket that the Supreme Court took off the page in August.