Alexei Navalny called on his supporters to vote for whoever was best-placed to defeat United Russia
THE FIRST indication that things were not going according to plan for Vladimir Putin’s ruling party at city-council elections in Moscow came when the official exit polls failed to materialise as expected at 6pm on September 8th. By the early hours, the once-mighty majority enjoyed by United Russia, a pro-Kremlin party, had taken a huge dent, a clear sign of a growing mood of discontent in the capital.
United Russia’s near collapse was all the more remarkable given that over a dozen aspiring candidates linked to Alexei Navalny , Mr Putin’s most prominent domestic critic, had been barred from the polls, a move that sparked weeks of protests in Moscow over the summer. The decision to blacklist the opposition figures was reportedly taken when the Kremlin realised that they would win at least nine seats, providing them with a political springboard for parliamentary elections due in 2021.
Mr Navalny’s tactic had some odd effects. Liberal Russians who celebrated the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 gritted their teeth and voted for Communist Party candidates, some of them open admirers of Joseph Stalin. “It’s not ideal, but there’s no other way left to register my disapproval of United Russia in Moscow,” said Mikhail, a middle-aged voter in Moscow. “The Communists have the best chance of victory.
Besides the vote in Moscow, Russians also went to polling stations to elect the heads for 16 regions, as well as lawmakers for 13 regional parliaments. United Russia suffered a colossal defeat in the Khabarovsk region, in the country’s far east, where the nationalist Liberal Democratic Party of Russia was set to win 34 out of 35 seats in the local parliament.
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