'Election without meaningful competition': Russia’s results won't measure support for Putin or war

To display this content from YouTube, you must enable advertisement tracking and audience measurement. One of your browser extensions seems to be blocking the video player from loading. To watch this content, you may need to disable it on this site. Cover image: © France 24 07:36 Issued on: 18/09/2026 - 10:14 Alison Sargent is pleased to welcome Grégoire Roos, Director of the Europe and Russia and Eurasia Programmes at Chatham House. According to Roos, Russia’s parliamentary election is revealing because of what the electoral process can still tell us about the political system Vladimir Putin has constructed. In the absence of any meaningful competition, and anti-war opposition excluded, Roos argues that the most revealing signals may lie elsewhere: in turnout, the timing of voting, the performance of the remaining parties, and the Kremlin’s effort to frame participation itself as evidence of national unity. Keywords for this article