Polls opened across Russia's eleven time zones Friday for a State Duma election that critics say was decided long before a single ballot was cast. It is the first vote for all 450 seats of parliament's lower house since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, and it comes as the war it triggered literally rained down on the capital: Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said more than 350 Ukrainian drones targeted the city and surrounding region overnight, with dozens shot down as they closed in on the city itself, in what Al Jazeera reported was one of the largest such barrages of the war.

Inside the country, the outcome is not seriously in doubt. Russia's Supreme Court banned Yabloko — the only registered party that had openly opposed the war — from the ballot in August, citing alleged campaign-finance violations and threats to "territorial integrity." Every party actually competing for the Duma's 450 seats backs the war effort, and candidates from the Communist Party's more critical wing have been arrested or disqualified in the run-up to the vote, according to CNN. United Russia, which currently controls 326 of the chamber's 450 seats, is widely expected to retain or expand its constitutional supermajority.

No monitors, prizes for clicking "vote"

For the third consecutive nationwide election in a row, Russia declined to invite observers from the OSCE's Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, a decision the watchdog called "deeply regrettable" and part of "a worrying pattern" of Moscow ignoring commitments it made to the international community as an OSCE member state. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova accused the OSCE of "double standards" in response.

Domestically, authorities leaned hard into digital balloting: Moscow residents who cast ballots online or at electronic terminals — rather than on paper — earn points redeemable for prizes, a scheme critics say is designed to push voters toward a system that is far harder to audit than paper ballots. CNN also noted televised candidate debates where opposing podiums simply sat empty because no genuine challenger showed up to fill them.

Voting for all 450 State Duma seats runs September 18–20 — the first such election since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022.

The vote is unfolding against the backdrop of a war that shows no sign of winding down. Ukraine has increasingly used long-range drone strikes to bring the conflict's costs home to ordinary Russians, and Friday's barrage, along with reported strikes on an oil refinery in Yaroslavl, was widely read as a deliberate attempt to overshadow the Kremlin's carefully stage-managed vote. Election officials also reported drone-related disruptions at some polling stations in southern Russia and in Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine.

With the result effectively preordained, the real story of this election may be what it reveals rather than what it decides: a wartime Kremlin tightening its grip on the ballot box even as it insists, publicly, that Russian democracy is functioning as normal. Voting continues through Sunday, with final results expected shortly after polls close.