Nobody doubts that Putin’s United Russia party will sweep the board in September’s parliamentary elections. But the Kremlin is playing a dangerous new game
It’s a cruel irony that ‘“election” and “choices” are the same word in Russian – vybory – given that the Kremlin allows few of the latter when it’s time for the former. Vybory bez vybora, or “an election without a choice” is a commonly heard phrase in the run-up to a vote.
Next month, when Russians go to the polls for parliamentary elections, there’s no doubt that the United Russia party will return to power in the State Duma. When the fringe party Yabloko attracted a little too much attention online, along with the support of high-profile opposition figures in exile, it was swiftly removed from the ballot this week.
But that doesn’t mean this vote will be business as usual, according to the political scientist Alexandr Kynev. Writing for the Russian-language Forbes magazine this spring, Kynev was already predicting that “the 2026 parliamentary campaign could be out of the ordinary.”
Why? Because at the start of the year, according to Kynev, “the Russian state abandoned its fundamental principle: not to interfere with the normal lives of its citizens.” Over Putin’s decades in power, the Kremlin adopted what Kynev calls an “inertia model,” whereby authorities would offer a basic level of stability in return for citizens giving up many freedoms and democratic rights.
As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine dragged into its fifth year, that changed. In January, the government introduced new taxes and charges, which hit small- and medium-sized businesses particularly hard. “Citizens quite logically perceived the state’s attempt to collect more money as a sign of a worsening situation in the country.” Then there were widespread internet blockages. Authorities claimed these were a security measure to counter Ukrainian attacks, but they also affected ordinary peoples’ banking services – previously “a point of technological pride for the country” – and messaging apps. (The phenomenon Kynev describes has only grown since his article was published, with new waves of Ukrainian drone strikes on Moscow, and disrupting supply chains leading to petrol shortages).
The government could change course before the vote, returning to its previous inertia model, as well as its strategy of handing out pre-election freebies. “But this is a very risky scenario: society is already agitated, and this irritation won’t subside quickly. Citizens may find they get a kick out of successfully exerting pressure on the government, and want to continue doing it.”
And if those in power falsify votes to help United Russia, this could also backfire, the analyst warns. “Large-scale discrepancies between actual public sentiment and the formal election results” could anger citizens. “The authorities are playing a very dangerous game.”
As Russians increasingly feel the effects of the war in Ukraine at home, there is a wave of political discontent. If the Kremlin can’t offer voters a “measured and controlled” outlet for this discontent – and it won’t at the ballot box in September – the anger may express itself in unpredictable ways.
The original article ‘Выход за рамки: почемуxx думская кампания 2026 года может стать нестандартной’ was first published in Russian by Alexandr Kynev for Forbes Russia on May 13, 2026.
Forbes Russia is a Russian-language franchise of the US business magazine Forbes. It was launched in 2004.
Summary by Theo Merz
