Parliamentary elections in Russia next Sunday

United Russia, chaired by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, is Russia's ruling party and has dominated national and regional legislatures for the best part of a decade.


United Russia is expected to dominate the new State Duma
The party currently controls 315 of the 450 seats in the State Duma, which gives it the two-thirds majority it needs to pass changes to the Russian constitution if required.

United Russia is unflinching in its support of the Kremlin, and of Mr Putin personally. Russia's prime minister has accepted the party's nomination to run for president next year, while the current president, Dmitry Medvedev, has agreed to be the party's top parliamentary candidate.

Maybe the Armageddon has some relation to this election...

Stay alert...

MOSCOW—The head of Russia's sole independent election-monitoring group was detained and her computer was confiscated by border police on Saturday, one day before parliamentary elections.

The incident steps up pressure on the monitoring group, Golos, which Russian state-controlled media has denounced as a tool of Western governments.

It comes a day after the Obama administration said it was concerned by "what appears to be a pattern of harassment" directed against Golos, as well as a Moscow court decision Friday that meted out a 30,000-ruble ($969) fine against the group for allegedly violating election laws.

Golos director Liliya Shibanova said she was stopped by customs officials at Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport early Saturday as she returned from a trip to Poland. Customs officials demanded that she surrender her computer because they received information that it might have "dangerous or illegal software", Ms. Shibanova told a Moscow radio station.

Russian customs confirmed that they seized her computer, and that they did so legally, according to the Interfax news agency. Customs officials didn't say why they thought her computer was suspicious, Interfax said.

Ms. Shibanova was allowed to leave the airport after about 12 hours, when she finally surrendered the computer. She said the incident was part of a larger campaign to discredit her monitoring group and prevent her delivery of a report on the elections to the European Parliament next week.

"I fear that now that they have my computer, some kind of provocation will be planned," she told Russia's Interfax news agency.

Russia's security services have in the past pursued Kremlin critics for using unlicensed software.

In 2007, a Western-funded media charity was shut down after its director was detained at a Moscow airport on a minor smuggling charge. The director, Manana Aslamazyan, failed to report that she was carrying more than $10,000 in currency as required on Russian customs declarations. She was carrying a mix of euros and rubles that amounted to $13,179.

Russia's Constitutional Court later dismissed the charge, but her charity, which had been part of the U.S.-based Internews that trains journalists, shut down after Russian security services raided its offices and seized computers and documents.

Golos, which has been monitoring elections in Russia since 2000, says its workers are accustomed to harassment from the authorities, who have bribed and threaten members to quit or report on the group's work. But the pitch of attacks became harsher about eight days ago, when the state-run newspaper Rossisskaya Gazeta ran an article attacking the group under the headline, "The Voice of Money."

Since then the group has been criticized in several newspapers and on a major television network as a puppet of Western governments trying to influence Russia's elections. Three members of Parliament and the head of Russia's central election commission have complained to prosecutors about its activities.

Golos will be monitoring Sunday's vote despite the accusations, the organization said. Opposition parties and a delegation from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe also plan to monitor the vote.

Andrei Buzin, chief of monitoring for Golos, said he doesn't expect harassment to affect monitoring in Russia's larger cities, such as Moscow and St. Petersburg. But it could hamper activity in Russia's regions where, he said, local authorities are also applying pressure.

"Here in Moscow we have lots of defenders, but in the regions our workers have no such help," he said. "They are often younger people and students," who are more vulnerable to such threats.

The Kremlin-controlled party, United Russia, is almost certain to lose its two-thirds majority in Parliament, in the first serious electoral setback it has seen since the party was founded in 2001. Kremlin critics are expecting some gerrymandering of the vote.

[link to online.wsj.com]

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Putin won.

Are you in Russia, as your flag states? I'm interested in knowing what Russians think about Putin, Medevev and the stance that is being taken by them.

results arent in yet

Putin and Medevev today were political lousers.

So, Russians do not like the hard stance they both take towards the US?
Or are there internal dynamics that are influencing the votes? Or both? Please give some me insight!

WATCH LIVE: Russia's Central Election Cttee announces first vote results

[link to rt.com]

Russia’s parliamentary elections: LIVE Updates

[link to rt.com]

It has nothing to do with the worsening of relations with the United States. We have quite strong protests. Plutocracy that brought Yeltsin to Russia is falling apart. His receivers (Putin and Medvedev) catastrophically quickly lose credibility. Against the backdrop of protest people going to vote for the communists. But this is not a vote "for" communists, but "against" plutocratic. [link to translate.google.ru]

Thanks for the link, interesting. So, the preferred outcome for your elections are? Are the other leading parties as hard-lined against US policies? Just trying to understand the dynamics and how it affects US/Russia relations, because the rhetoric between the two has obviously been harmful and Russia and US internal dyamics play a huge part in how they deal with each other.

my forecast - these elections will rigged, great excitement to the winter is not expected. excitement will be in march's presidential election. Rhetoric about (Russia - U.S.) can not say anything definite, but apparently it's NOT about a missile defense system in Europe - from our eyes hide a lot here. Perhaps it comes to preparing Prompt Global Strike.

What do you mean with Prompt Global Strike? Is that WW111?

since Strike will Global, all things are possible

[link to en.wikipedia.org]

Pizdets, dolboyobstvo, blyad'! Most have nothing to say. United Russia won again. Carousel because they have made the strongest. They say that although their sponsor will be less, many of whom will leave the party, and there - in Irkutsk County, said the Communist Party won, so that at the next election, United Russia will lose, again, there will soon choose the president.
I went today to vote. Fucked at a polling station. Food wretched people too somewhere gone, the rain came.

Yes, bro. As expected, we will fucked again. Interestingly, many of er friends voted for the "EdRo" ? Probably, every second man?
Pizdec, teper tolko revolucya.

What if Putin is afraid to lose the presidential election on early 2012, and promotes a false flag attack, or starts a war, just for using the "enemy" as way to "unite Russians", and win the elections?

\"Carousel\" no... all it\'s much easier.
Download film \"Generation Pi.\" You may find more understandable.

Not impossible...