Putin’s party secures a record number of seats in Russia’s wartime election

Russian authorities on Friday released the full results from the country’s first wartime parliamentary election, which further cemented the Kremlin’s overwhelming political control.

The three-day balloting ended Sunday. According to the results released by the Central Election Commission, the main Kremlin party, United Russia, will get more than three-fourths of the seats in the lower house, the State Duma, a record high. The tightly orchestrated vote excluded virtually any genuine opposition.

Nearly 60% of the 111 million eligible voters turned out, the most for a parliamentary election in over a decade. Authorities had spread the voting over three days and allowed online voting in some regions to boost participation.

The parliamentary election was the first since President Vladimir Putin launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and the first to include residents of four regions of that country that were seized and illegally annexed by Moscow later that year.

Voting also was held in Crimea, which was illegally annexed by Russia in 2014. Kyiv denounced the voting in those regions as illegal.

Putin declared Wednesday that the election results was a show of public support for the Kremlin policies.

A massive state media campaign and tight control over the…

Original source: https://www.nbcnews.com/world