President Vladimir Putin has signed a decree scheduling elections to the State Duma, the lower house of Russia’s parliament, for 20 September 2026, formally launching a campaign that will unfold against the backdrop of the grinding war in Ukraine. The Central Election Commission (CEC) confirmed on 16 June that the decree had come into force, and announced it would convene the following day to approve a three-day voting window from 18 to 20 September, a practice first introduced during the pandemic and now standard for federal ballots. The vote will also select governors in 11 regions and deputies in 39 regional assemblies, making it the country’s most extensive electoral exercise since the full-scale invasion began in 2022.

For the first time, the ballot will be conducted in the four Ukrainian regions the Kremlin claims to have annexed — Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson — as well as in Crimea, which was seized in 2014. The 450-seat Duma will be renewed under a mixed system: half the deputies will be elected from party lists, the other half from single-mandate constituencies. Seventeen parties are formally entitled to field candidates, though only a dozen can do so without gathering signatures, a hurdle that has historically favoured the incumbent United Russia party.

Viewed from Western capitals, the decision to hold elections in occupied territory is a deliberate attempt to normalise Russia’s territorial claims and project an image of constitutional order. Analysts in London note that the three-day format, combined with the expansion of remote electronic voting, will make independent scrutiny even more difficult. In Moscow, however, the vote is primarily a barometer of United Russia’s resilience. The party secured 49.8 per cent of the vote and 324 seats in 2021, down from 54.2 per cent and 343 seats in 2016, and its standing after more than four years of conflict, sanctions and mounting casualties remains uncertain. The Kremlin has reportedly set an internal target of 55 per cent for the party, a figure that would require a tightly managed mobilisation of state employees and public-sector workers.

With the campaign now officially under way, the CEC will begin the logistical work of registering candidates and organising polling stations, including in areas where active hostilities persist. The outcome is widely expected to deliver a comfortable majority for United Russia and its loyalist allies, reinforcing President Putin’s domestic mandate ahead of what could be a protracted period of geopolitical confrontation. Yet even a choreographed election carries risks: any visible dip in turnout or a surge in protest voting could be read as a sign of war fatigue, a variable the Kremlin’s political technologists will be watching closely as September approaches.