2023 Russian elections

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The 2023 Russian elections took place in Russia on Sunday, 10 September 2023 (single election day), with several regions allowing voting on 8 and 9 September. There were three by-elections to the 8th State Duma, 22 gubernatorial elections (21 direct and one indirectly elected), 16 regional parliamentary elections, and many elections on the municipal and local level.

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The election campaign was muted, with the major opposition figures having fled the country or being imprisoned.^[1]

The Golos election monitor called the election campaign the "most meaningless, boring and invisible campaign in the modern history of Russia", with the elections being held with a lack of competition and discussion of social issues important to the regions, as well as the candidates for office themselves not showing any interest for voting; it also stated that the elections in regions for governorships were "practically invisible not only to voters, but also to long-term observers". In Oryol Oblast, where gubernatorial elections were being held, there was practically no campaign, with only one candidate from New People coming to the debate; in Samara Oblast, only the LDPR candidate came to the debate. Golos also noted that the opposition candidates in the gubernatorial elections did not have large campaigns, did not hold public meetings with voters, and had small electoral budgets, with some candidates only running their campaign on social networks. BBC News Russian mentioned that the brightest campaign was held in Khakassia, where both the head of the republic and deputies of the local parliament were elected at the same time, with the United Russia candidate, Sergey Sokol, running against the incumbent governor Valentin Konovalov from the Communist Party. Sokol presented himself as a war hero, but ran a less active campaign compared to Konovalov and was still perceived as a newcomer in the region, according to RBK, which projected that Konovalov would likely win in the first round. On 2 September, Sokol withdrew, citing health problems.^[2]

• Yabloko: The longtime liberal, pro-western opposition party Yabloko ran with the campaign slogan of "For Peace!" and ran 216 candidates throughout the country. Nikolay Rybakov, the party's chairman, stated that "there are several dozen parties in Russia that support the policies of President Putin. And there is only one party—Yabloko—which opposes his policies.” However, Yabloko individually didn't go as far as to directly call for peace due to Article 207.3 of the Criminal Code of Russia allowing the arrest of any Russian discrediting the military and its actions.^[3] Yabloko party officials, candidates and supporters were harassed by government officials throughout the campaign. Rybakov was declared a "foreign agent" and the Pskov branch of the party had its headquarters raided after its leader, Lev Shlosberg, who was also declared a "foreign agent", refused to call the Freedom of Russia Legion a "terrorist organization".^[4] Russian police also seized and destroyed all campaign material of the Novgorod Oblast branch of the party.^[5] Various Yabloko candidates, including Elizaveta Kazantseva, a candidate for the Yekaterinburg City Duma received death threats to drop out of the race.^[6]

The Golos election monitor said that it had received almost 600 complaints of violations as of the afternoon on the first day of voting, with threats of violence, vote buying and people being barred from casting ballots being among the most common complaints. It also said it had filed 75 complaints with authorities and received official responses in 28 cases.^[7]

• 2023 elections in Russian-occupied Ukraine