The Kremlin has told Russia’s parliamentary parties to argue with each other more openly before the next State Duma election, according to people familiar with the campaign planning, in what looks like an attempt to make the race appear more competitive without putting the ruling United Russia party at any real risk.
The idea, the people said, is not to shake up the system, but to make it look less static. Officials want more noise, more visible friction and a stronger sense of political movement — while keeping the result broadly under control.
That approach appears to suit the so-called systemic parties as well. With little room to offer real alternatives inside Russia’s tightly managed political system, public quarrels have become one of the few ways to stay visible. For some parties, especially LDPR and A Just Russia, that matters more than ever.
A campaign with assigned roles
Behind the scenes, the campaign is already taking shape around a loose division of labor, the people said. New People is being steered toward business and technology. LDPR is leaning into the “Russian world” narrative and a more controlled form of discontent. The Communist Party is expected to keep working social themes and the language of protection for vulnerable groups. A Just Russia, meanwhile, is targeting patriotic voters, including those tied to the war.
There is little spontaneity in any of this. The point is not to let parties compete freely, but to give each of them enough space to occupy a recognizable niche.
What matters more to the Kremlin than headline ratings, the people said, is a simpler question: how many people are still willing to vote for United Russia. Internal polling, they added, looks less flattering than the public numbers suggest. Those unwilling to support the ruling party — including people who say they may not vote at all — are estimated at roughly 50% to 55% of the electorate.
That is the audience the rest of the field is effectively being left to fight over.
Why second place suddenly matters
Within that logic, the contest for second place is being inflated on purpose. It gives the campaign motion and helps shift attention away from United Russia itself. Whether that really changes much is another matter. For a large part of the electorate, the people said, it is not especially important which party finishes second as long as the overall system feels distant and predetermined.
Still, the authorities appear willing to test the model. According to polling from state-backed pollster VCIOM, New People is now running at around 10% to 11%, ahead of both the Communists and LDPR. If current conditions hold — including public irritation over some restrictive policies — that figure could rise further, possibly to 11% or 12%, while older parties lose more ground.
Political analyst Andrei Pertsev said the domestic political managers may decide to lock in that shift rather than resist it.
“They may consolidate New People at 11-12%, while pushing the Communists and LDPR lower, perhaps to 8%, just to be safe,” he said. “Or they may keep experimenting. United Russia, according to the same VCIOM data, is now at 30.6% and drifting down, and it’s not obvious what would reverse that trend. Further growth for New People would look understandable — not necessarily real, but understandable enough to legitimize the picture. The same goes for a decline in United Russia.”
Tension inside a managed system
That creates a potential problem of its own. If New People keeps rising while United Russia slips, even gradually, it could unsettle the balance inside a party system built around predictability. The irony is that New People itself is widely seen as a project that emerged with help from the Kremlin’s domestic political bloc and with backing linked to the Kovalchuk network.
The same instability could spill into personnel questions. This week, discussion began to circulate again around the future of State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin. The issue is not only Volodin himself, but who might replace him. The speaker’s office remains highly visible, and control of the Duma still provides useful leverage — over legislation, over agenda-setting, and over which issues are suddenly pushed into the spotlight.
Plenty of theater, not much substance
For all the talk of public competition, the room for meaningful political disagreement remains narrow. Most of the arguments expected during the campaign will likely revolve around secondary themes and symbolic disputes rather than real policy alternatives. That may generate headlines, but it is less clear that it will generate interest.
More attacks on the Communist Party are also expected, including from A Just Russia, New People and other participants, the people said. In practice, that would fit the same pattern: movement on the surface, limited choice underneath.
The deeper problem is harder to fix. Internal polling suggests that around half of Russia’s adult population believes there is no party that truly represents its interests. More public polemics are supposed to soften that perception. Whether voters will buy it is another question.
Yabloko remains a problem the system has not solved
The liberal Yabloko party is part of that calculation too. Pressure on it is continuing, especially against the backdrop of concern over protest voting. A formal ban before the election is still seen as unlikely, the people said, but the strategy in place is to weaken the party as much as possible without crossing that line for now.
Most of Yabloko’s recognizable figures have already been squeezed out of meaningful participation through administrative barriers. Beyond founder Grigory Yavlinsky, the party has few nationally known names left.
Even so, officials do not appear entirely relaxed about it. Public polling puts Yabloko at around 1%, but the people said its real support may be closer to 4% to 5% nationwide, and as high as 10% in large cities. That is not enough to transform the race, but it is enough to make the party relevant as a possible outlet for protest-minded voters.
For that reason, the likely goal is not to remove Yabloko altogether before the vote, but to reduce its role to a token presence — allowed to exist, but denied the tools needed for a real campaign. Even then, the people said, the risk remains that protest sentiment could find its way to the party anyway.
