Russia's State Duma election delivered record turnout and a landslide for United Russia. Kremlin insiders say the results were achieved 'through very dirty means.'

Meduza report of 21 September 2026 drawing on sources in and around the Presidential Administration. Sources said the administration's political bloc told state corporations and budget-funded institutions to step up 'corporate mobilisation', with mid-level staff tracking the turnout of small groups of colleagues; an employee of a Moscow state institution described a work chat listing staff said not to have voted. It reports that teachers in Yakutsk had to report their own and pupils' parents' turnout every two hours, and that the Communist Party's Altai committee said state employees were compelled to vote under threat of dismissal and sent names to mark. A strategist working with the administration said the turnout record was 'secured through very dirty means' and that which parties enter the Duma is decided personally by Putin, including A Just Russia's late passage of the threshold.