On 16 September, Vladimir Putin addressed Russians for the first time in a long while. Outside the New Year ritual, such an official address is a rare genre: the president last used it after the Crocus terrorist attack on 23 March 2024.
The upcoming address was announced on the morning of 16 September by presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov. This sparked some panic, since the Kremlin usually gives advance notice of planned addresses by the head of state. In the end, Putin simply called on Russians to turn out to vote in order to boost turnout and improve the result for United Russia, which positions itself as the “party of the president.”
He spoke in his now-traditional ultra-militarist tone: “We know what Russia is fighting for and what every citizen’s duty is. Victory is forged by our heroes on the battlefield. And participation in the upcoming vote, which will take place in the Year of Unity of the Peoples of Russia, is also a responsibility, a contribution to strengthening the country. Your choice and will would once again show that millions of people stand behind our fighters, that we are a united people, bound by common values, historical memory, love for the Motherland, and that no one will be able to split or intimidate us, undermine our statehood or socio-political system.”
The president did not meet public sentiment halfway or even hint at possible peace or a ceasefire; he said nothing about the country’s development or solving social problems. Putin has long acted so that any electoral format effectively becomes a plebiscite in support of his actions, and the political block abets him in this. The head of state frames the question as support for the war in stark terms, even though the party and political block had tried to move away from this topic. Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin has already had to work with an audience tired of war and calm it down. In United Russia’s vague program, the war is pushed into the background and appears only in the form of social support for participants in the invasion of Ukraine and their families. But this tactic runs counter to Putin’s views and ambitions: he actively supported and continues to support United Russia during the campaign, but does it his own way, not as the real situation demands.
If the substantive part of Putin’s address arguably harms United Russia, the very fact of his appearance still plays into the hands of Kremlin officials. It is an additional signal to the administrative system to squeeze out everything possible: step up corporate mobilization for turnout, control voting for the “right” party, and not shy away from falsifications.
The Campaign’s Last Trump Cards
Russian parties participating in the State Duma elections, which had shown almost no activity during the campaign, finally engaged in real agitation in the last days before voting. This applies above all to United Russia and New People. The “party of power” released videos featuring leaders of its federal list and an impressive support group, while the de facto frontman of New People, Vladislav Davankov, gave a program-setting interview to Andrei Pivovarov. By ordinary political-technology logic, this would have been a good opening to the agitation period, to be developed further. But the political block is “drying out” turnout, and the eye-catching start that should have drawn voters into the campaign has been shifted to its finale. Kiriyenko’s team needs to bring dependent and loyal electors to polling stations to meet the 55% KPI, while the rest of the electorate should stay home. That is why parties ran a sluggish campaign and only “woke up” at the end.
For the videos, United Russia assembled a truly star-studded lineup. Alongside the leader of the United Russia list, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, appeared hockey player Alexander Ovechkin, singer Tatyana Kurtukova, known for the patriotic hit “Mother Earth,” and actor Vladimir Mashkov. Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin was joined, perhaps, by Russia’s most famous doctor, chief physician of the Kommunarka hospital Denis Protsenko, as well as TASS director general Andrei Kondrashov and actor Sergei Garmash. War correspondent and media manager Evgeny Poddubny appeared with colleagues Semyon Pegov, Alexander Sladkov, and Evgeny Popov. In support of children’s ombudswoman Maria Lvova-Belova, hockey player Vyacheslav Fetisov was highlighted, while for a participant in the invasion of Ukraine, head of the pro-government Yunarmiya movement Vladislav Golovin, wrestler Fedor Emelianenko was brought in.
United Russia could have presented this support group at one of the congress stages, organized trips to the regions, and gathered prominent supporters under a common brand. All of that would have been logical. But already in spring, the party and the Kremlin understood that the real budget would be cut by at least a third (in September, party technologists indeed complained about a lack of funds). A large-scale star tour would have been a heavy financial burden for United Russia. Moreover, it would have drawn attention to the campaign and interfered with the “turnout-drying” strategy.
Throughout the campaign, New People effectively did not seek direct channels of communication with the protest audience and focused on marketing stunts to attract attention: inflatable elephants, which at some point and for not entirely clear reasons became the party’s mascots, and bright but rather meaningless events. Why New People did not place noticeable protest accents is clear: such moves would hardly have been approved by curators in the political block. A structure created by people close to Kiriyenko and the Kovalchuk brothers could not behave otherwise, although Russia has not just enough but a growing number of problematic issues. This year, rising prices and war fatigue have been joined by internet blocks and a petrol crisis. These pressure points are where parties could have struck precisely and constantly — if they were independent.
Nevertheless, New People would still like to win more votes — especially since the Kremlin has not set a hard stop on their finishing third or even second. A higher percentage means more seats in the Duma, which means the party can claim more leadership posts in committees and broader lobbying opportunities. Moreover, in the next campaign a party with a large faction will be better able to recruit sponsors onto its lists. That is why Vladislav Davankov at the last moment went to the protest audience: to those who were going to vote for Yabloko, who oppose the status quo and above all the war. Alexei Pivovarov is popular among such citizens and has the status of a “foreign agent.” All this lends Davankov, the interviewee, a dose of front-running bravado. Answering the journalist’s questions, the frontman of New People speaks about bans, denunciations, and some kind of pressure on participants in the political system. But again he does not go beyond the limits. In his telling, the initiator of the “pressure” is not the Kremlin but the leader of the Communist Party.
“Gennady Andreyevich Zyuganov comes to the country’s president and says that Davankov is the new Navalny. This is a real story. This is called political pressure,” said the New People deputy speaker.
Among the denouncers he listed not the strongest political figures (for example, Elena Mizulina) and preferred not to touch officials and United Russia members. Davankov tried to justify voting for odious laws by saying that the party then tries to “soften” the document, and that protest behavior would not have changed anything anyway, since United Russia could have passed any bill on its own.
On the war, Davankov spoke rather vaguely: he does not know its supporters, or they are “unhealthy people.” But further explanations — apparently calculated not to anger the big bosses — smeared all the “peace” pathos.
“Once the Soviet Union collapsed, and that was a mistake. These are the mistakes of specific people, specific communists. But our generation has to solve this problem — me, my friends, my colleagues who are now there, including at the front. You can’t leave this problem to the next generations. That is, you can’t just irresponsibly say: ‘I am against the war.’ You have to figure out how to get to this peace,” Davankov said, reducing everything to geopolitics pleasing to the top Kremlin leadership.
Vladimir Putin constantly laments the collapse of the USSR and is trying to regain its territories through war. The frontman of New People, speaking in a similar vein, pre-emptively removes any potential claims against himself (if they arise at all). But the vagueness of the formulations and the statement that there are no supporters of continuing the war in Russia (against the backdrop of bellicose escapades by Putin himself) may prove acceptable to some part of the moderate, war-weary electorate. If New People had more interviews like this and more attempts to bring problematic topics into broad agitation — even in this extremely herbivorous form — their campaign would look far more meaningful and understandable.
The contrast between the sluggish course of the campaign and the actions of its participants in recent days shows that, under current conditions, even United Russia’s videos, which are understandable in terms of political technology and attracting loyal voters, are too much of a luxury for Russia’s tightly regulated domestic politics. They contain a clear pragmatism, some political design — something that is already absent in the vertical of power, since it is oriented towards maintaining the illusions of one person.
