Regional elections in Russia – Kremlin candidates win in Moscow and occupied Ukraine – News

  • The Kremlin is likely to see the local and regional elections held in the middle of the war in a total of 85 regions of Russia as a successful test of sentiment.
  • In the capital Moscow, the incumbent mayor Sergei Sobyanin was confirmed in his office. In many other places, Kremlin candidates were leading.
  • There are considerable doubts about the fairness of the elections, especially in the sham elections in the occupied territories of Ukraine: Russia denied access to independent observers.

The mayor of the Russian capital Moscow, Sergei Sobyanin, has been confirmed in his office by a clear margin. After counting 91.3 percent of the voting protocols, he received 2.44 million votes, according to the Central Election Commission. A total of 3.2 million Muscovites cast their votes.

With around 75 percent of the vote, Sobyanin is unassailably ahead of his largely unknown opposing candidates. The second-placed Leonid Zyuganov, grandson of the Russian Communist Party leader Andrei Zyuganov, has so far only received 260,000 votes.

Legend:

Putin’s United Russia party is considered the favorite in the regional elections almost everywhere.

REUTERS/Alexander Ermochenko

There was no sign of election fever in Moscow either during the election campaign or during the three days of voting. The rush to the polls was limited. The incumbent Sergei Sobyanin was considered the clear favorite. There were reports that companies and administrations urged their employees to vote.

Electoral successes for Kremlin in other regions too

The Kremlin candidates also won or were unassailably ahead in most other regions. In the economically strong Moscow area, after about half of the counting, incumbent Andrei Vorobyov also received more than 80 percent of the votes cast.

Elections in occupied territories of Ukraine


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For the first time, Russia also held mock elections in the occupied parts of Ukraine. According to official information, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party clearly won in all four annexed regions, as expected.

In the four war-torn Ukrainian regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, the Kremlin-backed candidates won large majorities on Sunday with more than 70 percent of the vote, according to official Russian figures. Exact numbers for the election were not initially published.

In Russia’s Far East, the governors of Magadan, Chukotka and Primorye around the city of Vladivostok, where all votes had been counted, have already been declared winners. After the counting ended, the governors of the Siberian regions of Krasnoyarsk, Omsk and the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous District were also officially declared winners.

The Kremlin will probably have to accept its only defeat in the Siberian republic of Khakassia, where the communist governor Valentin Konovalov, who came to office on a wave of protests five years ago, led with around 60 percent of the vote. However, the Kremlin had already acknowledged its defeat there a few days ago.

Medvedev: Kremlin party achieves “worthy result”


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The head of the Kremlin party United Russia, Dmitry Medvedev, has rated his party’s result in the local and regional elections in Russia as positive. “It can already be said that United Russia has performed with dignity,” said the ex-president, who as deputy head of the National Security Council still has influence in Russian politics, according to the state news agency Tass.

It was possible to hold almost all positions. Now it’s about keeping the election promises. Medvedev separately addressed the sham elections in the four Russian-occupied Ukrainian regions of Kherson, Donetsk, Luhansk and Zaporizhia. He claimed that the people there had shown moral courage with their vote.

There were as few independent election observers in the occupied territories of Ukraine as there were in Russia itself. The non-governmental organization “Golos”, which had repeatedly uncovered violations in previous votes, had the Kremlin ban its co-chairman Grigory Melkonyants in advance as undesirable take.

Faux pas by the electoral commission

Nevertheless, a number of irregularities were reported again this time: In one region, communist supporters allegedly filmed a member of the local election commission exchanging ballot papers. However, the Interior Ministry spoke of only a few incidents across the country that had no impact on the result.

The electoral commission made a faux pas when results from the Siberian region of Yakutia appeared on its voting table – 20 minutes before the last polling stations there closed. The authority later spoke of a technical error. Only the results from polling stations that had already been closed were shown.

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