Russian voters have reportedly been handed ballot papers with an “X” already placed next to Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party.
The country began three days of voting on Friday in its first wartime parliamentary election. With almost no meaningful opposition on the ballot, the result is widely expected to reinforce the Kremlin’s political control, in a contest critics have branded a “sham” election.
In the city of Syktyvkar, voters were allegedly given ballots that had already been marked with a cross for United Russia, according to Communist Party candidate Oleg Mikhailov.
Video footage from Voronezh in southwestern Russia also appeared to show a man placing several voting slips into a ballot box.
A similar incident was reported in St Petersburg, where a polling-station worker was filmed inserting about 100 ballot papers into a box.
Reports also indicated that several ballot boxes had problems with their seals.
Workers at state-owned companies and defence plants were allegedly instructed to vote for United Russia and then send photographs of their completed ballots to their managers.
In the Samara region, unidentified people were reportedly seen leaving with ballots in their hands. On the island of Sakhalin, meanwhile, mobile polling stations operated without observers after officials blocked them from monitoring the process.
A pre-marked ballot paper showing a cross beside Putin’s United Russia party
Vladimir Putin speaks at an awards ceremony for Russian defence-industry workers at the Kremlin’s Senate Palace in Moscow on Friday, September 18, 2026
A man casts his ballot at a polling station in Moscow, Russia, on September 18, 2026
In the occupied Luhansk region, some voters were told they had already cast their ballots early, despite residents of several villages saying they had not been informed that pre-election voting was taking place.
One voter said: “I’m almost embarrassed to ask, but who did we vote for?”
Another said: “The [block of flats] where I’m registered has been destroyed [in the war]. I have no idea who voted or when. Disgraceful.”
A candidate for Russia’s liberal Yabloko party said: “It’s like winning the lottery eight times in a row.”
Yabloko, the only registered political organisation that had openly criticised the war, was removed from the ballot by Russia’s Supreme Court last month.
The decision means voters cannot choose a candidate campaigning against Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
Other anti-war politicians have been jailed or forced to leave the country ahead of the election campaign.
The election follows a summer marked by Ukrainian long-range drone strikes on oil refineries, which helped trigger a widespread fuel crisis. Warehouses operated by online retailers Wildberries and Ozon were also attacked.
People vote in Russia’s parliamentary election at a polling station in St Petersburg on September 18, 2026
Russian President Vladimir Putin votes online in the parliamentary election, at the Kremlin in Moscow, Friday, Sept. 18, 2026
The damage has exacerbated problems for the Russian economy and brought the war home for millions.
In Russia’s Black Sea resort of Sochi, polling stations were briefly closed because of a threat of a drone attack, local officials said.
One polling station in the Krasnodar region had to be set up in a different venue after a drone shattered windows there, said Central Election Commission head Ella Pamfilova.
For the first time, the parliamentary election includes residents of four Ukrainian regions that Moscow illegally annexed after the war began, but still doesn’t fully control.
Voting is also taking place in Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula that was illegally annexed by Russia in 2014.
Voters dropped their ballots in a box at one polling station in the Russian-held part of the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine as an armed Russian soldier stood nearby and watched.
Speaking at a meeting with officials, Putin said that Ukraine was trying to hamper the vote, mentioning a Ukrainian strike that killed the head of a polling station in the Zaporizhzhia region.
Authorities in Kyiv denounced the voting in the Russian-held areas as illegal and urged foreign governments and international organisations not to recognise the election, warning Ukrainians that taking part in organising the balloting could carry criminal liability.
Rescuers at the site of a building damaged by a Russian glide bomb, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, at a location given as Sumy, Ukraine in this image from video released September 19
Firefighters are dispatched to the scene after two consecutive attacks hit the central part of Odesa, Ukraine, on September 18, 2026
European Commission spokesman Christian Wigand also called the voting in Russian-held regions ‘illegal’ and said the European Union condemns it.
‘These so-called elections represent yet another blatant violation of international law. The European Union does not, and will never recognise either the holding of these so-called elections, sham elections, in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine or their results,’ he said.
Mr Wigand said the way the elections are held ‘underscores the continued and deepening erosion of democracy in Russia’, and that the Kremlin ‘deprives voters in Russia of a genuine choice about the future of their country’.
He also noted that Russia decided not to invite observers from the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, disregarding its commitments.
He vowed the EU will continue to support Russian civil society organisations, human rights groups and independent media.
