United Russia took 57.7 percent in the State Duma elections. Before the count, Dr Matthew Blackburn sat down with me and put the number in a range: 55 to 60 percent. He was right.
Matthew is at pains to point out that United Russia is not an ideological party. It is a receptacle that tries to synthesise Communist welfare, liberal modernisation, and anti-corruption concerns, within a centrist (by Russian standards) package the presidential administration can live with.
The systemic opposition — Communists, LDPR, New People — gets a voice and the odd region to govern.
What the 57.7 percent actually tells you about the war is more important than the parliamentary arithmetic. Blackburn is not selling the cartoon of a nation drunk on military music but rather one where there is war fatigue. There are winners in revitalised factories but also losers in some undeveloped regions that still haven’t recovered from the collapse of the Soviet Union. Moscow is not the whole country. Economic optimism bounced at the start of the war and is sliding again.
However, the Telegram war hawks who call for total mobilisation and nuclear strikes do not represent a consensus. Yet ordinary Russians will not accept a peace that looks like defeat.
That is why holding the election at all, with drones in the air and the war unfinished, was a statement: we are strong enough to have an election in the usual way.
I asked Matthew whether Russian foreign policy would shift after the vote and his answer was no.
No full mobilisation. Perhaps a quieter, narrower call-up for drone operators. War in the Middle East has been a gift to Putin, allowing him to give the west a taste of its own medicine.
Western satellites have enabled deep strikes into Russia; Russian satellites, he argued, are now helping Iran put American and Israeli targets at risk. Talk if you want to talk but the Russian military campaign will continue.
Ukraine, meanwhile, looks more like the “feckless democracy” Russia left behind in the 1990s than like a functioning state. Oligarchs still in charge, a President becoming more anti-democratic and repressive with every passing day, corruption running wild. and a very harsh winter ahead.
None of this requires you to admire the Russian system. But the reality is that Russian voters have just given Putin a mandate to continue prosecuting a tough attritional war A with a perfect storm building over Kyiv, Putin has the time and the money, and Zelensky does not.
You can watch the conversation here:
Wherever you are in the world, whatever your nationality and your religion, I wish you much peace.
A very informative and interesting analysis. Thank you, Ian, for inviting such a great guest