The current State Duma convocation concluded its working sessions earlier this week. Deputies will assemble once more on July 27, though the gathering is expected to feature a meeting with Vladimir Putin and take on a purely ceremonial character. Lower-house Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin long ago mastered the art of packaging both his own performance and that of the institutions he leads to maximum advantage. Consequently, the final sittings of the outgoing convocation became a carefully staged spectacle directed by the speaker himself. Volodin set out to command the widest possible public attention for parliament—and succeeded.
At a certain point, even before the war, the parliamentary chairman began operating in the spirit of the late LDPR leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky, who understood that scandal—whether a provocative statement or theatrical gesture—guarantees a place on the news agenda. Zhirinovsky could savagely berate United Russia colleagues, attack women, praise Putin, defend his party comrade, former Khabarovsk Krai governor Sergei Furgal, and then pronounce gubernatorial elections harmful in principle. Videos of young LDPR members in a bathhouse, apocalyptic forecasts—all formed part of Zhirinovsky’s public-relations universe. Volodin is, of course, far more conservative and far less flamboyant; his statements and initiatives remain ultra-patriotic. His most memorable line in this register remains: “No Putin, no Russia.”
Early in his speakership, Volodin sought to rid the Duma of its “mad printer” image, imposing order on sessions and tightening discipline while carefully feeding these efforts to the media. Yet two constraints quickly asserted themselves. First, the parliament’s role today is structurally subordinate to the Kremlin and the government. Second, the managerial, orderly posture proved rather dull. Volodin therefore shifted to a personal brand as an ultra-patriotic politician, an ardent defender of the president, with a single intended audience: Vladimir Putin himself.
In the final sessions the chamber considered a controversial bill under which Russians who have left the country and been convicted on political charges would effectively lose civil rights—consular services, full disposal of property, and access to the Russian banking system. The draft had appeared on the agenda months earlier and then vanished, quite possibly because both Duma leadership and the Kremlin preferred not to agitate society with such measures. It was nevertheless rushed through in the last session of the current convocation, drawing public attention in its own right. Volodin seized the opportunity to publicize himself on the initiative. In classic Zhirinovsky fashion the speaker showered the departed opposition with insults drawn from the late LDPR leader’s repertoire, labeling them “scoundrels,” “traitors to the Motherland,” and even “degenerates.” The quotations, predictably, flooded the media and therefore the presidential monitoring digests, where Putin is likely to have registered them with approval.
Volodin also proposed that the Defense Ministry consider replacing parliamentary recesses with military training for federal lawmakers. The idea is calculated to appeal to a president absorbed by the war; it may also find favor with a broader audience—ordinary Russians who would not mind seeing deputies in the trenches, even if only on exercises. Once again, the style recalls Zhirinovsky, who during his performances never spared officials or parliamentary colleagues.
Volodin’s objectives are transparent. Amid cadre stagnation he seeks to retain the speakership—a prestigious post to which he has grown accustomed. The closing sessions of the Duma therefore constituted a culminating demonstration designed to persuade Vladimir Putin, the ultimate arbiter of parliamentary leadership, that no better chairman can be found. Gone is the respectable image of the strict managerial speaker that Volodin cultivated at the start of his Duma career. He has assumed the mask of the flamboyant ultra-patriotic populist and appears disinclined to remove it, evidently because such theatrics work on Putin. An experienced politician, Volodin has correctly diagnosed the current requirements of the country’s top leadership for the role of State Duma chairman. The post now demands a second Zhirinovsky—a figure prepared to do whatever is necessary to entertain the principal spectator and the rest of the distinguished audience.
Yabloko Left Hanging
The Central Election Commission and regional election commissions have begun systematically striking candidates from Yabloko’s lists for federal and regional parliamentary elections. The party is exempt from signature collection in the Duma campaign because it holds seats in regional legislatures; the same exemption applies in those regions where it retains representation. Yabloko candidates should therefore be registered automatically in St. Petersburg, Pskov Oblast, and Karelia.
The authorities already possess a well-tested method for eliminating Yabloko contenders: social-media posts are routinely found to contain “prohibited symbols.” These may be emblems of Meta subdivisions declared extremist (Facebook or Instagram), imagery linked to the late opposition figure Alexei Navalny—still classified as an extremist and terrorist even after his death—or “Nazi symbols.” Victims of such removals include Yabloko nominees for both the State Duma and regional assemblies. One recent case is Pskov city-duma deputy and Holocaust researcher Tatyana Pasman, placed fourth on the party’s regional-assembly list. A court found her guilty of displaying “Nazi symbols” over someone else’s Facebook post and fined her 1,000 rubles; her right to stand was thereby extinguished.
New techniques are also being deployed. In St. Petersburg, where legislative elections are under way and where the party has traditionally been strong, the election commission determined that the document packages of 11 out of 24 Yabloko candidates were incomplete. The candidates themselves insist they submitted every required paper and that the missing items disappeared after submission. One nominee, Dmitry Khorzov, apparently anticipating trouble, recorded the handover on video, naming each document as he passed it to a commission member—including an employment certificate later listed among the “forgotten” items. Supplementary filings are no longer permitted, and candidates confronted with this method face disqualification. The loss of nearly half the list could trigger revocation of the entire slate’s registration.
The Kremlin and regional authorities are thus suspending Yabloko’s electoral prospects. Most probably, whether the party’s lists ultimately appear on ballots for the State Duma and the regional assemblies where it currently holds seats will depend on its ratings and “behavior.” Should Yabloko mount a vigorous campaign that capitalizes on public war-weariness and economic hardship, the attrition of candidates will intensify until the remaining numbers fall short of registration thresholds. Such pressure may compel the party to scale back campaigning and merely go through the motions. It is equally possible that the security services and the Presidential Administration—for whom Yabloko’s participation is more headache than asset, in contrast to the already barred single-mandate candidate Boris Nadezhdin—are preparing for outright exclusion of the lists and have begun pruning participants in advance. That scenario cannot be ruled out if the party’s real ratings exceed 5 percent (the Duma and many regional thresholds) or even 3 percent, the level that would secure federal funding. Judging by the foreign-agent designations and criminal cases already leveled against prominent Yabloko figures, the Presidential Administration does not regard the party as a legitimate player in the existing party system.
