War Experience, Few Seats

From September 12 to 14, Russia held elections at multiple levels, from gubernatorial races to local councils. More than 40,000 seats and elected positions were contested, including 21 governorships.

However, research by the independent outlet Novaya-Evropa found that veterans of the Russia’s war on Ukraine received no more than 2.3% of mandates nationwide and lost ground to other candidates at the municipal level.

Official figures on the number of military-linked candidates have fluctuated and sometimes contradicted each other. Edinaya Rossiya (United Russia Party) leader Dmitry Medvedev said the party fielded 380 such candidates, while, a week later, party secretary Vladimir Yakushev put the figure at 951. The Central Election Commission also revised its data several times, reporting 1,397 such candidates on August 13 and 1,663 on September 26.

Verification is difficult because no party publishes full lists of who it labels as “veterans.” However, Edinaya Rossiya does publish the names of candidates who advanced through its internal primaries, and those lists mark candidates described as participants in the war. 

According to Novaya-Evropa, only 30% of the 231 veteran candidates who cleared the primaries and were later registered by the Central Election Commission listed the military as their place of work. The rest appeared on ballots as employees of private companies, pensioners, unemployed, self-employed, or students. Some posed for campaign photos in uniform, but many appeared in civilian clothing.

Notably, many candidates labeled as war participants have little or no combat experience. In Komi, candidate Yevgeny Napalkov noted his military service in 2012 and his training center for volunteers but did not claim frontline service. In the official ballot, he was listed as a pensioner at age 49. Some candidates spent only months in the war zone. 

Nikita Malov, 22, ran for the Cheboksary city council while studying full-time at Chuvash State University. He leads a local branch of Edinaya Rossiya’s Molodaya Gvardiya (Young Guard) and a group providing aid to soldiers. Social media posts indicate that he served for less than a year in the “Cascade” unit, where many Russian officials have also served, but received six medals, including one for his contributions to military-patriotic work.

Because party data on military candidates is patchy, Novaya-Evropa built its own list of 1,455 “war” candidates. Of those, only 686 won office. Out of at least 45,250 positions contested, that amounted to just 1.5%. Even using Central Election Commission Chair Ella Pamfilova’s higher estimates, the figure rises only to 2.3%, far below Edinaya Rossiya's earlier prediction that war participants would win 10% of seats.

Edinaya Rossiya has claimed that 837 of its military candidates won seats. If, as it also claims, there were 951 such candidates overall, that would mean an 88% success rate. But the party provided no names, making verification impossible. Based on the primaries, 186 of 231 military-affiliated candidates ultimately won, about 80.5%. Among candidates explicitly tied to the military, the success rate was 79%.

Across parties, candidates’ success rates depended more on their party than on wartime credentials. Among Edinaya Rossiya candidates without military ties, 82% won — slightly higher than among its military-linked candidates. For the communist party KPRF, 17.6% of nonmilitary candidates won, compared to 15.3% of military-linked candidates.

Novaya-Evropa found that military credentials helped in regional and capital city legislatures but hurt at the municipal level. Among Edinaya Rossiya candidates for regional parliaments, 62% of military-linked candidates won, versus 37% of nonmilitary candidates. In capital city legislatures, the figures were 75% versus 55%. But in local councils, civilian candidates did better: 86% versus 78%.

Military-affiliated candidates took their largest share of seats (5%) in regional legislatures. In municipal councils, the figure was just 1.4%, and among mayors of cities and towns, 2.5%. One election analyst, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that regional elites report their success with war candidates to Moscow mainly through regional parliaments, where campaigns are carefully managed. 

At higher levels, “specially selected candidates” such as generals and former lawmakers tend to run, while few rank-and-file veterans do. Municipal elections are harder to control, the analyst said, because small shifts in turnout can change results, and it is harder to quietly manipulate the outcome.

Buryatia and Tuva elected the highest share of military-linked candidates (11% each), followed by Primorsky Krai (5.7%), and Pskov and Stavropol regions (5% each). In absolute numbers, Dagestan elected 109 such candidates, Tatarstan 63, and Orenburg region 60. The largest single bloc will sit in Ulyanovsk’s city parliament, where six of 40 deputies are military-linked. The highest proportion is in Syktyvkar’s city council, where five of 30 winning candidates (17%) are veterans.