Russia’s elections had few surprises – but how the Kremlin uses the results will be crucial

Many things about Russia are hard to predict.

The result of this election wasn’t one of them.

In a political system tightly controlled by the Kremlin, the party of power – United Russia –had been widely expected to remain the largest in parliament by a large margin.

There were no upsets. No surprises. No other party came close.

Preliminary results suggest that United Russia, which is supported by President Putin, is on course to retain its constitutional majority in the State Duma – with even bigger numbers than last time round.

And that’s after more than four-and-half years of war on Ukraine, which have resulted in massive battlefield losses for the Russian army, economic difficulties and, most recently, widespread petrol shortages due to Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian oil facilities.

Those parties trailing far behind, but which have cleared the 5% threshold and made it into the new Duma, featured in the previous parliament, too: a Duma that was fully behind the Kremlin and the so-called special military operation.