The chairman of the «United Russia» party Dmitry Medvedev has become more active in the run-up to the 2026 Duma elections. This week he held public meetings with the heads of the party’s regional executive committees. Medvedev spoke about the future of the «United Russia» party after the war. He believes that the party should prepare for a «change of agenda» in order not to lose the elections. He also approved the creation of a new «United Russia» party history textbook to train party cadres.
Relations between Medvedev and the ruling party, which Putin entrusted to him in 2012, have never been easy. Medvedev knew that Vladimir Putin has always been the real informal leader of the «United Russia» party. During his time as prime minister, Medvedev had little involvement in the activities of the party — he took part in important ceremonial events, but he did not delegate his people to the direct leadership of the «United Russia» party and was not involved in its operational management, which was handed over to the Kremlin’s political bloc for complete control. Until 2016, the political bloc was led by Vyacheslav Volodin, and it was his associates who held key positions in the party. After Volodin left to become the chairman of the State Duma, new political administrators led by Sergey Kiriyenko ousted Volodin’s people from the party’s leadership. The General Council was now headed by the governor of Pskov, Andrey Turchak, the son of an old acquaintance of Putin’s from his days in St Petersburg politics. He took an active role in the party’s work and his associates were given important positions in the party, although the political bloc of the presidential administration put experienced political managers Sergey Perminov and Alexander Sidyakin in charge to look over them.
Medvedev, who retained the post of prime minister until 2020, was not active in the party, which enabled Andrey Turchak to promote himself as the real frontman and manager of the «United Russia» party, and the official title of his position, «Secretary of the General Council», was quickly changed to «General Secretary», which hinted at his real position and administrative weight. After his resignation from the government, Medvedev tried to become active in the «United Russia» party, wanted to head the party list and considered becoming the «party» chairman of the State Duma. However, Putin prevented him from doing so, and Medvedev (then deputy chairman of the Security Council) lost interest in party activity for a while.
After Turchak’s resignation, Vladimir Yakushev, a former presidential envoy to the Urals and a close associate of the Moscow mayor from his time in the Tyumen region, took over as secretary of the General Council. Now Dmitry Medvedev clearly wants to prevent Yakushev from becoming General Secretary, the de facto leader of the party, as was the case with Turchak. In the conditions of personnel stagnation, any occupied career «height», including the post of the «United Russia» party leader, becomes valuable. In the context of the State Duma elections, this position offers hope of promotion — for example, to the post of Duma chairman, which Medvedev craved in 2021. It is likely that Medvedev is feeling pressure from another influential player: Sergei Sobyanin, a member of whose team has become the party’s operational manager. In this sense, Andrey Turchak was a lone wolf or representative of a rather vague and amorphous group of «old Saint Petersburg elites» without clear plans and goals. From the point of view of political pragmatism, Medvedev’s goals are quite clear. He wants to retain the status of the leader of the ruling party (albeit a rather formal one), gain a position of real influence in the run-up to the Duma elections, and prevent the emergence of a new ‘general secretary’ in the party and, most importantly, the possible loss of control over the «United Russia» party to Sobyanin’s group.
Electronic voting for all of Russia
Vladimir Putin discussed the elections with the head of the Central Election Commission, Ella Pamfilova, and the formal reason for the meeting was to discuss the regional campaigns on the single day of voting in September. Pamfilova has long been one of Putin’s most experienced courtiers: she knows exactly what, when and how to say to the president in order to stay in his good graces. Immediately after the onset of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, the head of the CEC gave her full public support to the war and began using ultra-patriotic rhetoric along with its symbols, such as «Z». Putin meets with Ella Pamfilova quite often and always speaks favourably of her work and that of the CEC. So it is hardly surprising that when the CEC met recently, the chairwoman would once again resort to her tactics. First, she talked about official turnout records and «high results». Pamfilova did not mention who exactly achieved these high results, but the context made it clear that she was referring to government candidates. The political bloc of the presidential administration has long been aware of Putin’s passion for record numbers and dutifully supplies the president with new records, using tricks ranging from corporate mobilisation to outright fabrication. Second, she once again repeated the political administrators’ narrative of the elections as evidence of «stability» and social cohesion. This, too, is in keeping with Putin, who is addicted to prebiscites and constantly wants to see the proof of his popularity and broad popular support.
Thirdly, Pamfilova touched on another of Putin’s favourite topics, albeit unrelated to the elections: the alleged promotion of young people within Russia’s power vertical. In response to Putin’s comment that the CEC had been renewed by 50 per cent, Pamfilova said: «We have young people coming in. Young people are becoming more and more involved in this process. We have a renewal in the commissions.» But looking at the names of the relatively new CEC members, it is easy to see that there are no really young people among them, but rather «the same old, same old»: the same people, many of whom have been working in the vertical of power for a long time. These include Elvira Khaimurzina, former deputy head of the Moscow regional government, Andrey Shutov, head of the Political Science department at Moscow State University, and Konstantin Mazurevsky, former chief of staff of the «United Russia» party faction in the State Duma. The clever presentation of ‘renewal’ and ‘youth development’ is very similar to the way the political bloc of the presidential administration assures Putin and the public of career advancement for war veterans. There are relatively few military personnel who have actually been promoted in the civilian service, and often former or current senior officials and deputies are presented as such. But the tactic is working: the president talks about this ‘new elite’ in full seriousness, and then Pamfilova adopts this tactic of the political bloc. In her interpretation, the «younger cadres» in the CEC are seasoned officials and respected party functionaries.
The chairwoman of the CEC had to observe certain rituals in order to promote an agenda favourable to herself and the political bloc. To ensure new electoral records, the authorities cannot do without promoting electronic voting, and this could be a problem: Putin, for whom all these records in plebiscitary elections are intended, has long been a conservative deeply suspicious of any innovation. The whimsical autocrat, who demands proof of his popular support, may question the reality and weight of electronic voting. «Many regions are already asking to be allowed to introduce it (i.e. the electronic voting). At the moment, 37 regions have already tried it, some of them not for the first time. People have gotten a sense of it, they like the fact that they have the right to choose. Today they are happy to go to the polling station, and tomorrow they will be able to vote remotely if they cannot go to the polling station,» Pamfilova praised e-voting to Putin.
Interestingly, the head of the CEC let it slip that the authorities are using the e-voting system in order to mobilize voters. According to Pamfilova, e-voting is preferred by women (66 per cent of the total number of voters) and middle-aged people (44 per cent of the total number of those voting electronically). Interestingly, the Moscow authorities, who use e-voting the most, present it as a progressive form of voting designed for the younger public. Pamfilova happened to be more honest and gave a fairly accurate portrait of the typical electronic voter (middle-aged women), which surprisingly coincides with the portrait of a significant part of the administratively dependent electorate, female employees of budgetary institutions. The chairwoman of the CEC hinted that the commission would ‘implement’ the practices of the Moscow mayor’s office in the organisation of voting throughout the country. These practices include the use of electronic voting terminals, which were widely used in the 2023 Moscow mayoral election and the 2024 presidential election in the capital. Such terminals are located at polling stations, and one can vote after scanning one’s passport. Despite the fact that the terminal itself is located at an offline polling station, such vote is counted as an electronic vote. The use of such electronic voting terminals facilitates corporate mobilization and also allays the fears of the elderly and middle-aged population about Internet voting.
Many Russians fear data leakage, and a terminal at an official polling station that simply scans a passport under the supervision of authorised personnel could indeed allay such fears. Pamfilova confirmed that she had taken note of Moscow’s experience and would adopt it for the 2026 Duma elections. Most likely we will see electronic voting terminals in cities with more than a million inhabitants, who can still vote in protest and surprise the authorities with the results of their vote. It is likely that these terminals will be introduced in regions that are considered to have a high protest potential, such as the Far East, the North West and the Irkutsk region. Putin did not object to Pamfilova’s ode to electronic voting, so his silence and head nod may be a sign of approval for the system.
