DOMINANT ANGLE
Brussels is more focused on the lack of suspense in the Russian vote than its outcome, just hours from the largest Ukrainian drone attack ever recorded.
Dominant angle identified — does not reflect unanimity of this country’s media
KEY POINTS
- 01
United Russia is credited with 49.4% of the vote according to the VCIOM exit poll, a state institute, a score close to that of 2021.
- 02
The Communist Party (KPRF) and the nationalist LDPR collect 14.2% and 10.7% of the vote, respectively, among the only formations authorized to compete against United Russia, while Yabloko was excluded.
- 03
The last day of voting was marked by a Ukrainian drone attack: DH mentions '1,600 drones shot down' on the Russian side, La Libre more than a thousand drones having hit a refinery and residential areas.
ANALYSIS
Brussels, September 21, 2026. Belgium is more focused on the lack of suspense in the Russian election than its outcome itself. United Russia, Vladimir Putin's party, is expected to win the legislative election with 49.4% of the vote, according to the exit poll by VCIOM, a state institute, "around the same score as in 2021", report DH and La Libre. The Communist Party (KPRF) garnered 14.2% and the nationalist LDPR 10.7%, the only formations allowed to compete against the Kremlin's party, alongside the conservatives of Fair Russia and the liberals of New People. Yabloko, the only party openly opposed to the war, was excluded from the election.
The Belgian press emphasizes that this vote, the first for the Duma since the start of the large-scale offensive in 2022, took place "without suspense in a country where the expression of dissent is severely repressed". The 450 seats in the lower house were also renewed in the Ukrainian territories occupied and annexed by Moscow, a detail that DH and La Libre mention without developing it further.
Another notable fact noted in Brussels is the coincidence of the calendar between the vote and the war itself. The last day of voting, Sunday, was marked from the morning by a Ukrainian drone attack, which DH estimates at "1,600 drones shot down" on the Russian side, while La Libre mentions more than a thousand devices that hit a refinery and residential areas. The two titles include this episode in a conflict marked, in recent months, by an intensification of strikes on both sides of the front, without taking up the language elements of one or the other party.
What Belgium is highlighting is the mechanics of an election without real choice rather than a political victory: United Russia's score is presented as the expected confirmation of a system where frontal opposition to the war was excluded even before the vote count, rather than as a renewed mandate. The two newspapers also note the continuity of the result with that of 2021, as if to emphasize that two and a half years of war have not changed the balance of power displayed at the polls or the physiognomy of the State Duma, despite the unprecedented scale of the Ukrainian attack that occurred on the day of the vote.
