United Russia Claims a Record 355 Seats in Its Wartime Parliament
The Duma election’s near-final count delivered the Kremlin its script: a record 355 of 450 seats for United Russia — up from 324 — after three days of what observers called carefully orchestrated voting, including armed-guard polling in occupied Ukraine. France condemned the exercise outright; a lone anti-war party won what the wires could only call “a tiny regional foothold”. The result will be presented as public endorsement of the war.
Manufactured majorities still carry information: 355 is bigger than the Kremlin needed and bigger than last time, and over-engineering a result nobody doubted signals the system’s priority — not persuasion but demonstration, the state showing its machinery functions under bombardment, sanctions and a thousand drones over the capital on polling weekend. The occupied-territory returns are the durable damage: each certified result there becomes annexation’s administrative fact, a paper wall future negotiators must either accept or demolish. The anti-war foothold, microscopic and regional, matters as calibration — the regime permits exactly enough dissent to measure it. Watch how the new Duma is used: wartime parliaments this obedient exist to ratify escalations not yet announced.