Russia's Duma Vote Extends Into Annexed Ukrainian Territories for First Time

Russia's parliamentary election has, for the first time, been extended to residents of four Ukrainian regions that Moscow annexed in September 2022, a move Kyiv and its allies have rejected as unlawful.

Voting across Russia began on Friday and runs through Sunday, but balloting in the annexed territories and in some border areas on the Russian side has been under way since late last month. Officials attributed the longer window to security concerns.

Russian authorities say the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia territories — which Moscow calls its "new regions" — together hold more than 3.5 million voters. None of the four is fully under Russian control, and the annexation has not been recognised internationally. Voting is also taking place in Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula annexed in 2014.

President Vladimir Putin, in a speech on Wednesday, stressed the significance of the ballot in those areas for the State Duma, the lower house of parliament, saying residents would be voting for it "for the first time since their reunification with Russia." He added that Russian soldiers involved in the fighting would also cast ballots, and framed the vote as a demonstration that the country's people stand behind its fighters and cannot be divided or intimidated.

The election, the first wartime vote for the Duma, is intended to reinforce the Kremlin's political dominance and to project public backing for the war. At one polling station in the Russian-held part of the Donetsk region, voters placed ballots in a box as an armed Russian soldier stood nearby.

Ukrainian authorities denounced the voting as illegal and urged foreign governments and international organisations not to recognise it. They warned Ukrainians that helping to organise the ballot could carry criminal liability.

A coalition of nine Ukrainian human rights groups called on residents of the Russia-held territories to stay away from the polls, describing the election as an attempt to use the electoral process to legitimise the occupation and the attempted annexation of Ukrainian land.

Violeta Artemchuk, coordinator of the Donbas SOS human rights group and a signatory to the statement, said local election commission members were going door to door accompanied by Russian troops and security agents to press people into voting. She said Moscow-appointed authorities were threatening public-sector employees with dismissal for failing to vote and tying pensions and other social payments to participation, adding that pensioners and people with disabilities who rely on assistance could be labelled disloyal and stripped of benefits.

European Commission spokesperson Christian Wigand called the voting in the Russian-held regions "another blatant violation of international law," saying the European Union does not and will never recognise the elections or their results.

Political analyst Volodymyr Fesenko of the Kyiv-based Penta Center said elections held at gunpoint amount to a farce, arguing that voting conducted amid shelling and bombing reflects the Kremlin's attitude toward the people and the electoral process in the occupied territories.