In our mini-series on how Russia’s main parties are preparing for the 2026 State Duma elections, we have already covered the current situation within the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF). Now it is United Russia’s turn.
United Russia’s Role in Domestic Politics
In the 2021 elections, United Russia secured 324 seats out of 450 in the State Duma — 72% of all mandates. This outcome was made possible by a combination of widespread electoral fraud and a convincing victory in 198 of the 225 single-mandate districts. The single-mandate system significantly distorted the parties’ true level of support in parliament: winning often requires just 35% of the vote, a threshold United Russia could easily clear thanks to its overwhelming resource and administrative advantage.
The party’s entire campaign at the time revolved around its usual social rhetoric, but its real driving force was opposition to Alexei Navalny’s «Smart Voting» strategy and its main beneficiary, the CPRF.
Six months before the start of the full-scale war against Ukraine, not a single United Russia candidate even mentioned the possibility of such a scenario — largely because they themselves were likely unaware of it. This accurately reflects the party’s real role in the country’s domestic politics. At the federal level, United Russia essentially functions as the «political-legal department» of the bureaucracy (including that of state-owned companies). Its role at the regional level is somewhat more complex, though we will address that later.
A telling indicator is the distribution of legislative initiatives in the current Duma session. Deputies introduced only 49% of all bills, while the government, president, and Supreme Court (predominantly the government) accounted for 23% — down from 32% in the previous session. Moreover, initiatives from the executive branch are far more likely to pass than those from deputies, many of which are submitted purely for PR purposes and were never intended to become law. For example, the CPRF has tried to promote its own versions of the Electoral Code and Labor Code, while deputy Alexei Nilov (expelled from the LDPR) has submitted over 700 bills in the past five years alone, the vast majority of which had no chance of success.
Given the diversity of Russia’s bureaucracy, United Russia itself is quite heterogeneous. The DumaBingo project, which studies lobbying in the State Duma, clearly identifies various influence groups to which different deputies belong. One of the largest and most influential factions consists of lobbyists for the security services. At the same time, there is no shortage of representatives from regional bureaucracies, state corporations, and major businesses closely tied to the state. The project’s authors identify State Duma Information Policy Committee chairman Sergei Boyarsky, Energy Committee chairman Pavel Zavalny, and his deputy Dmitry Islamov as lobbyists for Gazprom’s interests. Vladimir Gutenev, chairman of the Industry and Trade Committee, is linked to Rostec. Single-mandate deputy Alexander Spiridonov represents the United Shipbuilding Corporation’s interests.
Bills favoring Russian Railways (RZD) are also introduced by influential deputies, including Alexander Zhukov and Sergei Neverov, while commercial structures connected to the company remain among United Russia’s biggest donors. In 2024 alone (the most recent data available), RZD contractors donated 22 billion rubles to the «party of power» — an amount comparable to the budget of a small Russian region.
United Russia at the Regional Level
At the regional level, United Russia looks noticeably different from its federal counterpart. There are far more players pursuing their own interests, including representatives of regional business (developers, housing and utilities companies, and others), although even they are generally dependent on their relationship with local bureaucrats. As a result, the party’s main problems in many regions stem not from external opponents but from conflicts within United Russia itself.
The most striking recent example is the 2024 mayoral election in Bratsk, the second-largest city in Irkutsk Oblast. The main rivals were two United Russia members: the incumbent mayor, backed by the regional branch of the party and the governor, and the mayor of the neighboring Bratsk District, supported by the region’s senator. The latter ultimately won.
An equally sharp intra-party conflict erupted last year in Novosibirsk Oblast. A State Duma deputy from United Russia had controlled the local LDPR branch for several years. On the eve of the regional elections, he moved the entire Liberal Democratic faction into United Russia, pushing many longtime party members off the lists. Primary election participants eventually accused the party of rigging the results.
Another scandal broke out last year in Vologda Oblast, where Governor Georgy Filimonov tried to sideline a group linked to one of Russia’s wealthiest men — Alexei Mordashov, owner of Severstal. In response, Mordashov-connected single-mandate deputy Alexei Kanaev launched a harsh public attack on the governor.
Party Purges
The construction of the «power vertical» once involved systematically squeezing independent figures out of politics: single-mandate regional deputies, mayors of major cities, and anyone seen as inconvenient. Now, it appears this vertical is being strengthened within the «party of power» itself.
In recent years, there have been increasingly frequent reports of criminal cases against sitting United Russia deputies at various levels. In late 2025, following the opening of a criminal case, State Duma deputy Anatoly Voronovsky surrendered his mandate. In Tomsk Oblast, the daughter of State Duma deputy Tatyana Solomatina was arrested. In Oryol Oblast, a criminal case was opened in 2023 against the deputy speaker of the regional council and United Russia businessman Sergei Kutenev; in 2025, cases were brought against the head of a district and the chairman of the district council of deputies. In Ufa on March 11, 2026, searches were conducted at the home of a city deputy and developer whose company operates the patriotic park «Russia — My History.» In Pskov Oblast on December 30, 2025, regional deputy Anastasia Povtoreiko — one of the leaders of United Russia’s party list in the 2021 elections — was detained. In St. Petersburg in 2025, Legislative Assembly deputy Oleg Milyuta was charged with taking a bribe. In 2026 in Tomsk Oblast, a criminal case was opened against a subsidiary of the TDSK holding — one of the party’s largest donors in 2015−2016 — owned by former prominent United Russia developer Alexander Shpeter. In Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug in 2024, a case was initiated against regional deputy Alexei Andreyev.
There is no official statistics on the number of criminal cases against deputies at various levels, but they are clearly numerous. We conducted a simple news monitoring over the past five years across a random sample of regions (every tenth region, from small ones like Adygea and Karachay-Cherkessia to large ones like Chelyabinsk Oblast) and found reports of arrests, convictions, or criminal cases against deputies in every single one. Moreover, these were invariably fairly prominent figures.
Membership in United Russia and even a mandate received from the party no longer guarantee protection from law enforcement or additional business advantages. This significantly reduces the willingness of independent players to associate with the party and politics in general — whether as deputies or donors.
Paradoxically, against the backdrop of a weakened systemic opposition and declining interest in running under other parties’ banners, a similar trend is visible within United Russia itself. The number of entrepreneurs seeking mandates has noticeably decreased. With taxes on business rising, doing business becoming more difficult, and law enforcement becoming more active (jailing a deputy is often more advantageous and high-profile than jailing an ordinary businessman), tensions and discontent within the «party of power» are bound to grow.
United Russia and the War
The party’s own bureaucratic apparatus also has serious reasons for dissatisfaction — chief among them the Kremlin’s program to promote «SVO veterans» into power and the heavy use of military rhetoric in general.
One of the main revelations of the summer 2022 election campaign, three months after the start of the full-scale war against Ukraine, was the near-total absence of military themes in the campaigning of candidates even from the most «patriotic» parties — United Russia and the LDPR. Candidates who regularly met with voters privately told the author of this article that they quickly realized the topic was perceived by people very differently from how pro-Kremlin media portrayed it.
This trend has continued in subsequent years. At the federal level, military themes are actively exploited, but at the regional and local levels they are almost always reframed in social terms: support for the families of service members, reconstruction of destroyed settlements, volunteer work, and the like. No one wanted to take risks and face unpredictable reactions from voters.
The promotion of war participants to elected positions has also proceeded very slowly. In 2024, Andrey Turchak, first deputy speaker of the Federation Council, was removed from his post as secretary of United Russia’s General Council. He was sent into what was effectively exile as governor of the small, subsidy-dependent Republic of Altai. One of the reasons cited for the rapid fall of one of the country’s most prominent federal politicians was the Kremlin’s dissatisfaction with the insufficient number of «SVO participants» on party lists.
In United Russia’s primaries for selecting candidates for regional legislative elections on September 8, 2024, only 103 war participants registered — just 3.2% of all applicants. Many of them were former officials and deputies who had made only a token trip to the front, along with high-ranking military officers who had regularly appeared on ballots even before the war.
Turchak was replaced as General Council secretary by Vladimir Yakushev, the presidential envoy to the Ural Federal District. However, the situation has not improved significantly: in 2025, «military candidates» made up less than 2% of all nominees in elections at all levels (across all parties and self-nominated candidates). This is half the number of candidates with prior criminal convictions.
The old party elite’s reluctance to see the «new elite» in winnable list positions is understandable. Including someone new requires pushing someone else out, which automatically increases the number of disgruntled people within the party. Moreover, many of these military candidates bring no electoral value — they lack name recognition, money, or the ability to appeal to voters.
What Electoral Results Is United Russia Bringing to the Start of the Campaign?
Despite all the problems outlined above, United Russia’s prospects in the upcoming elections currently look quite favorable. The main reason is the forced passivity of all its political opponents. Some have been killed, arrested, or driven out of the country, while others — including the largest parliamentary parties — prefer to stay silent on any issues that are truly problematic for the authorities.
In this environment, United Russia has significantly improved its electoral performance. In 2025, legislative assembly elections were held in 11 regions. In ten of them, the party’s results were substantially better than in the previous similar elections in 2020 or compared to the 2021 Duma elections in the same territories (an average increase of 17 percentage points for Duma-level results). A similar picture emerged in elections for city councils in regional administrative centers: results improved almost everywhere (average +14 percentage points), except in abnormally tightly controlled regions (Kazan, Stavropol) and Oryol, where the regional governor is still CPRF member Andrei Klychkov.
United Russia runs campaigns that may not be the most creative but are well-organized and systematic, covering the entire territory of the regions. The opposition does not come close to possessing the resources needed to run campaigns of comparable scale and coordination.
If the 2026 State Duma elections follow an inertial scenario, a significant increase in United Russia’s results compared to 2021 should be expected. However, society is showing growing signs of tension due to deteriorating living conditions and an increasing number of unpopular restrictions, including internet blockages. This tension could combine with the latent discontent of a significant portion of the party members themselves, who may begin to sabotage decisions imposed from above. In such a situation, achieving the Kremlin’s planned targets would require an even greater escalation of electoral fraud, which is already extremely high.
