Surprise! Putin just won the Russian elections. But his biggest win was elsewhere

September 22, 2026 — 8:30am

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London: There were no shocks in Moscow on Monday when Vladimir Putin’s allies declared victory in elections that gave them almost 80 per cent of the seats in the national parliament.

All the political shocks are elsewhere in Europe. Right now, none are greater than the upheavals in Germany, where voters are deserting Chancellor Friedrich Merz and seeking salvation from the hard right.

And there is a direct link from the ballot boxes to the bombs falling in Europe’s worst conflict since World War II.

In Russia, the election result was predictable for a country ruled so long by an autocrat whose enemies have a habit of falling out of windows from great heights.

If anything, the minor surprise was that Putin’s party, United Russia, only gained 58 per cent of the vote. How could 42 per cent be allowed to choose anyone else? This helped prop up the democratic facade, of course. It did not have any broader meaning because United Russia gained overwhelming control of the parliament, the Duma, with 355 of the 450 seats.

‘Total war’: The human face of the assault on Ukraine

Anyone who seriously challenged Putin, or opposed the war in Ukraine, was simply not on the ballot.

Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, took all this as proof the people backed their leader.

“These indicators, of course, point to the highest level of consolidation within Russian society around the head of state,” Peskov told journalists in Moscow.

European leaders, however, called it out as a fraud.

“The so-called Duma elections marked another major setback for Russian democracy. Their outcome was never in doubt,” said Kaja Kallas, the former Estonian prime minister and the European Union’s high representative for foreign affairs.

“The Kremlin silenced dissent, barred the only registered party that opposed its war in Ukraine, and shut out international election monitors.”

While the........

© The Sydney Morning Herald