Russia’s Annexed Ukrainian Territories Will Take Part in State Duma Elections for the First Time

Moscow began drawing residents of the Russian-controlled part of Donbas into Russia’s domestic politics long before the full-scale invasion. At the time, it looked like an instrument of pressure on Kyiv in negotiations over the Minsk agreements—if you do not take Donbas back on our terms, we will take it for ourselves. From today’s vantage point, the same practice reads as a rehearsal for annexation.

The first step was passportization: beginning in 2019, residents of the LPR and DPR received Russian citizenship under a simplified procedure, and by the summer of 2021 more than 600,000 people out of the separatist republics’ population of 3.6 million had obtained it. The new citizens were then incorporated into Russia’s electoral process. For the 2020 referendum on constitutional amendments that reset Vladimir Putin’s presidential term limits, voting trips were organized for them in neighboring Rostov region. In September 2021, the scheme was repeated for the State Duma elections, with electronic voting added—residents of Donbas were issued Russian individual insurance account numbers en masse so they could register in the system.

The payoff was immediate: at polling stations in Rostov region where residents of Donbas voted, United Russia recorded abnormally high results. Those votes helped elect Alexander Borodai—a political operative from Vladislav Surkov’s team and one of the organizers of the “Russian Spring”—to the Duma.

After the invasion and annexation of 2022, Russian citizenship became effectively mandatory for residents of the occupied territories: since 2023, those who refuse have faced the threat of deportation. The 2024 presidential election provided the final tally. The DPR and LPR delivered some of the highest levels of support in the country for Putin’s re-election—95.3% and 94.1%—behind only Chechnya, with 98.9%, and Tuva, with 95.3%. The same display of loyalty is now expected from Donbas in the Duma elections.

The timing of the campaign could hardly be worse. Russian forces are advancing slowly along the Donbas axis, but conditions in the immediate rear have deteriorated sharply in recent months: Ukrainian drones regularly strike military infrastructure and logistics.

Luhansk, until recently considered a relatively safe rear city, now lives under daily alerts. Disruptions to supply chains are no longer affecting only the military: this summer, both Luhansk and Donetsk faced fuel shortages and persistent supply interruptions. Closer to the front, food shortages have begun—in Rubizhne, in northern Luhansk region, even bread is in short supply.

The hardships of war are compounded by a prolonged social crisis caused by economic and infrastructural decline. In the summer of 2025, Donetsk’s water-supply system collapsed, and the consequences have still not been addressed: a pipeline intended to supply the city from the Russian side was built hastily and amid extensive corruption, and proved ineffective. Russian investors, meanwhile, are preparing to close a significant share of the Donbas mines that remain operational, while local hospitals lack beds—priority is given to wounded Russian servicemen, whose flow military hospitals can no longer handle.

Local authorities habitually blame Ukraine for what is happening: there is no water because Ukrainian forces blocked the operation of the water utility, and no fuel because of strikes on Russian refineries. Propaganda emphasizes civilian casualties from Ukrainian operations—as after the deaths of students in Starobilsk—using them to justify strikes on Ukraine and turn the local population against Kyiv.

At the same time, the occupation administrations are encouraging Russians to move to Donbas with relocation payments and high salaries, hoping to create a loyal social stratum. Rising property prices in Luhansk, Donetsk, and Mariupol have become an indicator of the process. Housing designed for newcomers with money is becoming unaffordable for locals—and this is only intensifying social tensions.

Security problems directly affect the voting procedure itself. Remote electronic voting could mitigate them, but it requires reliable communications, which do not exist: internet and mobile networks are constantly shut down in Donbas cities because of drone attacks.

The campaign has been entrusted to local political management, where Russian officials are increasingly displacing local personnel. From 2014 to 2026, the share of officials from Russia in the DPR government rose from 13% to 48%, and in the LPR from 3% to 35%. Most senior positions remain in local hands for now, but the trend is clear and accelerating.

This is most visible in the DPR, where by 2026 all key government posts had been taken by Russians, primarily graduates of personnel programs overseen by Sergei Kiriyenko, deputy head of the presidential administration: Prime Minister Andrei Chertkov, a former housing and utilities minister in Nizhny Novgorod region; First Deputy Prime Minister Vladislav Ochnev, a former employee of the Altai Krai administration; and Deputy Prime Minister Vladimir Yezhikov, an official from the Industry and Trade Ministry.

The same logic applies to candidate lists. In the top five of United Russia’s list for the “new regions,” on which residents of Donbas and the partially occupied regions of southern Ukraine will vote, the key positions went to federal politicians: incumbent State Duma deputy, Don Cossack leader, and LPR overseer Viktor Vodolatsky; former ombudsman Tatyana Moskalkova; Russkiy Mir Foundation head Vyacheslav Nikonov; and Admiral Vladimir Kasatonov. The only local candidate—Luhansk native and “Hero of the LPR” Yan Leshchenko—received only fifth place.

Even the heads of the DPR and LPR, Denis Pushilin and Leonid Pasechnik, were left off the lists, as were their counterparts Yevgeny Balitsky in Zaporizhzhia and Vladimir Saldo in Kherson—even though United Russia usually places governors at the head of regional lists to carry the campaign. The picture is similar in single-member districts: State Duma deputy Alexander Borodai and Channel One war correspondent Irina Kuksenkova are running in the DPR.

Other systemic parties have little chance in the annexed regions: the territory has become an area of special attention for United Russia, prominent Russian figures are in no hurry to go there, and local candidates are little known. The only notable candidacy is perhaps that of Sergei Arbuzov, a minister under Viktor Yanukovych who spent many years quietly in political exile in Moscow and is now running on the A Just Russia list.

Even by the modest standards of pro-Russian loyalism, residents of Donbas have ample reason for discontent. Nevertheless, the Kremlin intends to extract record support from the region—through a combination of carrots and sticks.

As voting day approaches, a surge of social populism should be expected. At a meeting on the development of the “new territories,” Putin has already reported on large-scale construction programs and demanded that the region quickly reach nationwide Russian living standards. A system of patronage by wealthy Russian regions over Donbas is also in operation: the Moscow government is overseeing the reconstruction of Luhansk, redesigning the city center in the recognizable style of the Russian capital’s urban improvements.

A different set of tools is reserved for those who express active discontent. The population is under close surveillance by the security services, high-profile trials of “Ukrainian saboteurs” are held regularly, and the formally abolished border between the former LPR, DPR, and Russia continues to exist in practice—with checks, interrogations, and searches of personal belongings.

Russia’s electoral model, in which there is no genuine competition and the outcome is predetermined through administrative means, has easily merged with the practices established in the LPR and DPR over the years of their existence. While the machine occasionally malfunctions in other occupied territories—in the autumn of 2025, a conflict erupted over the formation of a local election commission in the occupied part of Zaporizhzhia region—the system in Donbas has long been fine-tuned.

But vulnerabilities lie behind the outward appearance of unity. An administration staffed by officials dispatched from “the mainland” is losing touch with the population. The promised victory recedes beyond the horizon, while populist measures do not offset the growing hardships of life in a combat zone. The record turnout and percentages for United Russia that the occupation administrations will report will look not like evidence of the new authorities’ strength, but like an attempt to conceal their failures.

The Kremlin’s insistence on holding elections under wartime conditions stems from its chosen strategy of normalizing the war. But the longer it continues, the more it turns into a strategy of self-deception: the propaganda image falls ever further behind reality—especially for those watching Ukrainian drones operate from their own windows. Elections as a demonstration of the new authorities’ invulnerability are rapidly losing credibility, but the framework the Russian regime has imposed on itself leaves it unable to step outside it—and this only worsens its position.