Empty podiums, prizes for e-voting, no opposition: Russians head to the polls amid intensifying war in Ukraine

By Zahra Ullah, CNN

Moscow (CNN) — “The candidates have not shown up at our studio, so I’ll say goodbye for now.” Elizaveta Dorokhina, a Russia-1 state TV anchor, told viewers, with three empty podiums visible either side of her in the studio. The broadcast switched to a commercial break.

All six registered candidates in Ryazan, a city 122 miles southeast of the Russian capital, had failed to turn up for a televised debate ahead of upcoming elections.

Russia is holding parliamentary elections, the first since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, in a political landscape in which critical opposition is effectively nonexistent, with opponents barred or having fled the country. Voters will elect 450 members of the State Duma – the lower house of the Russian parliament – as well as regional and municipal heads.

The empty studio offers a window into the democratic ritual Russia is so keen to put on display: the candidates, the debates, the appearance of choice. Projecting stability and an image of due processes has become a cornerstone of President Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

The voting will take place over a three-day period starting Friday. The United Russia party, which backs Putin and has dominated domestic Russian politics for over 20 years, is widely expected to win a majority of seats. Among the areas voting are Russian-controlled parts of Ukraine – in Crimea, Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia.

Russia’s only registered anti-war party, Yabloko – “apple” in Russian – was briefly allowed to take part before being barred by the Supreme Court last month.

Grigory Yavlinsky, a co-founder of Yabloko and a prominent liberal Russian politician, told CNN that the Kremlin was taken aback by support for the party and its core message calling for a ceasefire in Ukraine.

‘Those who oppose are outcasts and enemies’

Although Putin is not on the ballot himself, Russia’s leader of more than two decades casts a long shadow over its politics.

“The Russian political system is a rigid, personalistic regime with institutions that are imitational,” Andrei Kolesnikov, a Moscow-based political analyst and columnist for The New Times and Novaya Gazeta told CNN.

“Elections have no impact whatsoever on the nature of policy, which is predetermined. Their main purpose is to demonstrate to the public the ‘majority effect’: everyone is ‘for’ Putin’s policies, and those who oppose them are outcasts and enemies,” Kolesnikov added, who’s been labeled a “foreign agent” by Russian authorities.

The vote is taking place amid a backdrop of creeping social tensions in Russia, as the Kremlin continues to propagate a war in Ukraine – now in its fifth year. Internet restrictions and a crackdown on civil society and dissent are impacting many Russians, even as Ukraine’s long-range strikes bring the war home to them in a new way.

Kyiv’s drone attacks deep into Russian territory, designed to push the Kremlin into negotiations, have shattered the illusion that the consequences of what Moscow calls the “special military operation” are far removed from ordinary Russians.

Some have resulted in loss of life and injuries (although nowhere near on the scale seen in Ukraine), but crucially, strikes on the country’s oil refineries have led to widespread fuel shortages, with queues of cars forming in major cities, while hits on Russia’s largest online retailers have increased pressure on the already strained wartime economy.

That apprehension was reflected in the mood of voters in Moscow on a cold, crisp September day a week before the elections. Raisa, a voter in Moscow who, like everyone CNN spoke with, declined to give her full name, said she wanted “worthy people” elected who would “think about simple people” and their needs. When asked what she hopes the future will be like, she said, “I’d probably say what many people would: peaceful. I really want it all to end,” delicately nodding to the war.

Marina Alexandrovna, 73, told CNN she was undecided who to vote for but that she “always votes,” adding: “It’s not who votes that matters, but who counts the votes.” Regarding the current political climate in Russia, “we know what life is, what laws are being passed. I don’t like it, but there’s nothing we can change,” she said.

Authorities in Moscow have introduced material incentives for residents of the capital in the form of points for prizes, if they vote either online or at an electronic voting terminal at a polling station, rather than casting a paper ballot. Critics have long been suspicious of the Kremlin’s introduction of electronic voting because they argue it’s less transparent.

A key distinction of these elections is that 186 veterans of the war in Ukraine are standing as candidates for State Duma, with more than 1,500 former servicemen also running for regional and municipal positions. This follows the launch of the “Time of Heroes” program by Putin in 2024 to train battle-hardened veterans for government and public servant roles. None of the war veteran candidates to whom CNN reached out wished to be interviewed.

Only anti-war party barred from standing

Arguably, who has been excluded from the ballot says more than the candidates who are allowed to participate.

Yabloko was struck off only days after being registered for the election after a pro-Kremlin nationalist party, Rodina (Motherland in Russian), brought a lawsuit against the party alleging foreign financing and copyright violations. Yabloko’s leadership argues the move was politically motivated.

At the party’s headquarters in Moscow, a running counter records the number of days that have passed since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, next to a copy of a painting showing a pyramid of human skulls beneath circling crows by Vasily Vereshchagin. The 19th-century Russian painter became famous for his depictions of the horror of war. The image feels like a private memorial to Russia’s quashed anti-war movement.

The Kremlin’s decision originally to allow Yabloko to stand in the parliamentary elections was a “low-risk experiment,” said Irina Busygina, a Russian political scientist now based in Berlin.

Busygina believes once the Kremlin’s political operators saw a spike in online interest in Yabloko, with its calls for a peace deal with Ukraine, especially among the younger generations, they moved to neutralize the party, which had registered hundreds of candidates across the country.

“(Putin) was not prepared for the situation where a liberal democratic party like Yabloko would have such strong support in the country,” co-founder Yavlinsky said.

“We have no democracy in Russia yet. We started our reforms 30 years ago but failed completely, and that’s why we have an authoritarian system which is not prepared for democratic elections.”

Yavlinsky added that those who are allowed to run in the elections are “100% supporting the current political line of the Kremlin,” whereas Yabloko is an opponent calling “for an alternative, to move to immediate ceasefire and negotiations with Ukraine, Europe, and with the United States.”

Yavlinsky, who has spent 35 years in Russian politics, doesn’t expect any surprises in these elections, but said he hoped Russia would start diplomatic negotiations urgently. Moscow must “find common language with Europe, with Ukraine, with the US, because it’s the only way forward. It is necessary to avoid the possibility of nuclear war,” he said.

Observers may question the point of holding elections where no meaningful opposition is allowed and the result appears largely predetermined.

Russia has long criticized Ukraine’s lack of war-time elections, going so far as to refer to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as “illegitimate” because he has outstayed his term and not called an election. Zelensky says holding elections while Ukraine is embroiled in the war is “impossible.” Ukraine’s constitution bars elections from being held under martial law, which was introduced after Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022.

Experts agree overwhelmingly the election results will be used to strengthen Putin’s mandate during war time. Russian social media channels have been rife with rumors of a further mobilization post-elections to shore up Russia’s manpower in Ukraine – something the Kremlin vehemently denies.

According to Kolesnikov, “the elections will be presented as further legitimization of the special (military) operation and of the most brutal internal political repression and restrictions on citizens’ rights, which are now far more severe than anything seen in the late Soviet era.”

But on the streets of Moscow, some remain optimistic that the future will be brighter. Sixty-three-year-old Oleg said he hoped “some stability will emerge for ordinary people… and that, going forward, our ties with good people abroad will improve. In both the West and the East.”

Putin’s continued emphasis on addressing the war’s “root causes” and achieving his original goals – including demilitarizing and subjugating Ukraine – suggests that may be a long way off.

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Ana Archen and Darya Tarasova contributed to this report.