{"id":778528,"date":"2026-09-22T04:40:11","date_gmt":"2026-09-22T04:40:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/778528\/"},"modified":"2026-09-22T04:40:11","modified_gmt":"2026-09-22T04:40:11","slug":"putin-consolidates-grip-on-russia-as-49-ukraine-war-veterans-elected-to-parliament-russia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/778528\/","title":{"rendered":"Putin consolidates grip on Russia as 49 Ukraine war veterans elected to parliament | Russia"},"content":{"rendered":"

Russia\u2019s new parliament will include 49 deputies who have taken part in the war against Ukraine<\/a>, officials have said after a landslide victory by the ruling United Russia party in widely criticised elections.<\/p>\n

The pro-Kremlin party won a record 355 seats in the country\u2019s 450-seat Duma lower house of parliament, according to preliminary figures. The result further consolidates Vladimir Putin\u2019s grip on power and gives United Russia a super-majority bigger than its previous 2016 record<\/a> of 343 seats.<\/p>\n

The polls are the first to be held since Putin\u2019s 2022 full-scale invasion<\/a>. United Russia\u2019s general secretary, Vladimir Yakushev, said 86 veterans from Moscow\u2019s \u201cspecial military operation\u201d were likely to have been elected. \u201cThis is quite a substantial contribution,\u201d he said. He later revised the number to 49.<\/p>\n

As Russia counted the votes from its widely criticised election, Kremlin forces attacked targets in Ukraine, damaging the historic Zaporizhzhia National University. Photograph: Ukrinform\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n

Putin\u2019s press spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, said the vote showed that Russians supported their longtime leader, who has ruled as prime minister or president since 2000<\/a>. \u201cThese indicators, of course, point to the highest level of consolidation within Russian society around the head of state,\u201d Peskov said.<\/p>\n

Western governments denounced the polls held in Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine as a \u201csham\u201d. Russia\u2019s supreme court last month banned the only party that opposes the war, Yabloko, from participating, leaving liberal voters with no option to express discontent.<\/p>\n

Kaja Kallas, the EU\u2019s top diplomat, called the election \u201canother major setback for Russian democracy\u201d. \u201cThe Kremlin silenced dissent and shut out international election monitors,\u201d Kallas wrote on X, adding: \u201cThe veneer of democracy is all that remains.\u201d<\/p>\n

The elections come amid speculation that Putin may announce a large mobilisation<\/a> campaign this autumn, in an attempt to inject fresh momentum to Russia\u2019s bogged down military campaign. Ukraine\u2019s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, has suggested the Kremlin wants to recruit another 300,000 troops.<\/p>\n

Aftermath of a Russian drone attack in Zaporizhzhia. Photograph: Reuters<\/p>\n

In recent months, Russia has escalated its bombardment, pummelling Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities <\/a>with jet-powered attack drones. Ukraine has launched its own deep strikes, hitting Moscow\u2019s oil refinery on Sunday<\/a>, as part of what Zelenskyy has dubbed \u201clong-range sanctions\u201d.<\/p>\n

Russia\u2019s has also intensified its campaign to seize a string of cities in Ukraine\u2019s eastern Donbas region, including Kramatorsk and Sloviansk. So far, it has been unable to break through, with Ukrainian commanders reporting their own counteroffensive near the city of Lyman.<\/p>\n

Inside Russia, criticism of the conflict is banned. Anti-war bloggers have been arrested and jailed<\/a>. A local politician, Boris Nadezhdin, who previously tried to stand in presidential elections on a peace ticket, was barred from September\u2019s elections<\/a> and accused of being a \u201cforeign agent\u201d.<\/p>\n

The other parties that won seats in this month\u2019s poll all support the \u201cspecial military operation\u201d. They include the communists, who came second with 40 seats, the ultra-nationalist LDPR party, with 25, and the New People party, with 20. Chechnya\u2019s leader, Ramzan Kadyrov, a Putin ally, was re-elected and said to have won more than 99% of the votes.<\/p>\n

A shopping centre, struck during Russia\u2019s drone attack on in Zaporizhzhia. Photograph: Reuters\/Stringer<\/p>\n

Russia\u2019s elections chief, Ella Pamfilova, said United Russia had won a resounding victory with 57.83%, with 95% of ballots counted, up from the 49.8% it won in the last parliamentary election, in 2021. She praised voters for resisting \u201cpsychological pressure\u201d.<\/p>\n

Overnight, Russia carried out what Zelenskyy called a \u201cbrutal, targeted attack\u201d on the southern city of Zaporizhzhia. He said a nine-storey residential building, a university building, a shopping centre, and a boiler house were all damaged, with five people injured. A woman in Kharkiv region was killed in a drone strike.<\/p>\n

Zelenskyy said: \u201cRussia is not scaling back its escalatory actions and is signalling a readiness to expand the war. All this is happening against the backdrop of global stability already having been shattered by this war. We must continue to pressure the aggressor to bring this war to an end.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Russia\u2019s new parliament will include 49 deputies who have taken part in the war against Ukraine, officials have…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":778529,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-778528","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/778528","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=778528"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/778528\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/778529"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=778528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=778528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=778528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}