ANALYSIS: The Kremlin’s party holds 349 seats, and its first job is taxes

349

The September 25 number

One party, one number, and a chamber almost full.

Despite the millions of votes independent analysts consider suspect, the Central Election Commission signed off on the final results of Russia’s parliamentary election on September 25. United Russia takes 349 seats out of 450.

A record. The previous one dated from 2016: 343 seats, The Moscow Times recalls.

Behind it, the Communist Party with 37 seats. The LDPR, 23. New People, 19. A Just Russia, 17. One seat for Rodina. Four independents.

Ten parties were running, according to TASS. More than 7 million voters cast their ballots online, according to Pamfilova, as quoted by Izvestia.

Three days of voting

Voting ran from September 18 to 20. A pencil. A folded ballot. The dry thud of paper dropping into the box.

Or a phone buzzing. In Moscow, nearly 78% of voters voted remotely, according to an analysis by Meduza.

The Commission counts 67,448,094 voters. Turnout of 59.8%, according to TASS.

349 seats is more than three quarters of the chamber. 349 seats is the constitutional majority, plus 49. 349 seats is a record that hasn’t yet passed a single law.

Not yet.

A record without a law, for a few more days.

Four days later

The September 24 cabinet meeting

The polls close on the evening of September 20.

Four days go by. Not even a week.

On September 24, Mikhail Mishustin’s government approves the draft federal budget for 2027 to 2029. Finance Minister Anton Siluanov presents the numbers.

Revenue in 2027: 43.3 trillion rubles. Spending: 48.8 trillion. Deficit: 2.2% of GDP.

And, in the same package, tax increases.

Polls closed, taxes published

The draft is specific. It taxes dividends and interest on deposits at the income tax scale, from 13% to 22%, instead of 13% to 15%. It taxes the sale of property at the same scale. It taxes purchases on foreign platforms, with 22% VAT. It taxes windfall profits at some mining companies at 30%. It taxes dividends paid to non-residents on type C accounts at 35%.

The business daily Kommersant summed it all up in its headline. A budget full of numbers and taxes.

Polls closed on the 20th, taxes published on the 24th.

The vote first. The bill after.

September 30, at ten o’clock

A two-article decree

On September 25, at 1:30 p.m. Moscow time, the Kremlin publishes a decree by Vladimir Putin.

Two articles. Not one more.

The first convenes the new Duma’s opening session on September 30 at 10 a.m. The second puts the decree into force on publication.

The legal basis fits on one line: Article 99 of the Constitution.

October 1, at the latest

The budget, for its part, must be sent to the Duma before October 1. Mishustin reminded his government of that on the 24th.

He added, in substance, that the elections had just ended. That the final results weren’t in yet. That they had to work fast. Explain the budget in the regions, then in the Duma committees, once those were formed. So the money could flow from the first days of January.

A chamber with no committees. A budget already waiting for it.

The government didn’t even wait for the Commission’s signature to talk about the new Duma. It was already treating it as a date on the calendar.

Four days to publish the bill. Five to convene the chamber.

Here is my reading. This piece says 349 is first of all a budget number. A majority built to pass a war budget fast. With a tax bill drafted to touch as few voters as possible.

The Duma has no committees. It already has a budget.

How the record was built

Single-member districts first

How do you get to 349?

Through the single-member districts, first. United Russia takes 209 of 225, according to the seat breakdown published by Izvestia. On the party lists, 140 seats.

Nearly 58% of the list vote. More than three quarters of the seats.

First-past-the-post does the rest. It turns a lead into a sweep.

Simple. Mechanical. Effective.

The ballot without Yabloko

Yabloko, the only party campaigning for peace, was struck from the party-list ballot by the Supreme Court in August, The Moscow Times reports.

Independent experts quoted by the same paper call these the least competitive elections in the country’s modern history.

A Just Russia cleared the 5% threshold by a whisker. It gained 67,000 votes in one hour, between 96% and 97.5% of results processed, Meduza noted.

A record is also built with the absent. The party that asked for peace wasn’t on the ballot. The one that refuses it took three quarters of the chamber.

Winning is easier when the other side isn’t on the ballot.

Ballot boxes under occupation

A first, according to TASS

TASS presents one fact as a point of pride.

For the first time, the agency writes, residents of the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions took part in a Russian parliamentary election.

In precise words, that reads differently. Russian ballot boxes were set up in four Ukrainian regions that the Russian army partly occupies, RFE/RL notes.

An unrecognized annexation. A vote organized under occupation. Votes drawn from territory taken by force.

The missing tally sheets

It is precisely these territories, along with the Leningrad region, whose tally sheets were partly still unpublished when the results became final, Meduza notes.

An occupied territory. Missing tally sheets. Results declared final anyway.

For Kyiv, this isn’t a vote-counting detail. It is the occupation settling into the occupier’s institutions.

For the Duma, it is one more line in the record.

They vote even where they have no right to be.

Thirty-five, not fifty-eight

The Kremlin’s reading

The opposing reading exists. It can be defended.

Turnout of 59.8%, the highest since 2011, according to The Moscow Times. An electorate that votes, in wartime, for the party in power. Therefore, support.

Ella Pamfilova, head of the Commission, praised voters for showing “the highest level of civic responsibility.”

The Kremlin has its number. It has its line.

What the curves say

And yet the curves tell a different story.

For years, independent analysts have applied Sergei Shpilkin’s method. Compare, polling station by polling station, turnout and the leading party’s score. In a clean vote, the stations form a cloud. Here, they trace a comet’s tail.

According to Meduza, about 18 million of United Russia’s 30 million paper-ballot votes may have been fabricated. Without them, the party would sit around 34% to 35%. RFE/RL, with its own analysis, comes to about 35%.

The same analysts put real turnout at around 40%. Not 60.

Those are their numbers. I report them as theirs.

Meduza also counts nearly 2,250 polling stations with suspiciously round results, against 1,300 in the previous parliamentary election.

Official turnout says 60. The curves say 40.

A core that is growing

From 30 to 35

Now for the fact that cuts against my own reading.

The same analysts, the ones who put numbers on the ballot stuffing, estimate that United Russia’s genuine core vote has grown. About 30% in 2021. About 35% in 2026, according to Meduza.

Five points more. In the middle of a war. With taxes already raised.

A columnist who publishes only the numbers that suit him doesn’t deserve to be read on the others.

I’ll admit the number that worries me isn’t 349.

It’s 35.

One voter in three, three seats in four

That’s true. And it doesn’t change this: 35% of the vote doesn’t become 78% of the seats without a machine.

A party that carries one voter in three holds three seats in four.

Abroad, more than 280,000 voters cast ballots in 152 countries, according to The Moscow Times. The Commission announces 58% for United Russia there.

Yet the party lost in 40 of those countries, almost always to New People, according to Meduza.

Far from Russian polling stations, the cloud looks more like a cloud.

Thirty-five percent who vote, three quarters who sit.

46

Members from the front

46.

That’s the number of elected members who fought in the war against Ukraine, according to Ella Pamfilova. 41 of them carry the United Russia label, Meduza reports.

A little more than one seat in ten.

On the 25th, Dmitry Peskov welcomed it. “The experience of our heroes is in high demand,” the Kremlin spokesman said, according to The Moscow Times.

What the budget saves for them

The same budget protects their pay.

Pay for soldiers serving in what Moscow calls its special operation keeps its 13% and 15% rates, Siluanov specified on the 24th. So do Far North bonuses.

Heroes, says the Kremlin. They are elected members who served in an invading army. They will vote on that army’s budget.

The average age of members drops from 57 to 53, Pamfilova noted, according to Izvestia.

Younger. More military. More numerous behind the same label.

The war now has its own benches in the Duma.

Six percent

A tax scale that dodges the crowd

This is where the number gets decoded.

The package’s big reform, the tax on passive income, will reach at most 6% of citizens, according to Siluanov. About 4 million people, according to the ministry as cited by Kommersant.

It spares deposits under one million rubles. It spares soldiers and their pay. It spares Far North bonuses.

It hits elsewhere. Shareholders. Investors. Sellers of property. Mines. Gold. Fertilizer.

Mutual funds will also pay 15% on their passive income, Kommersant adds.

The justification fits in one sentence from the same paper: metal and fertilizer prices rose in 2025, producers pocketed a surplus, the state takes it back.

Where the voters are fewest

Everything points to a budget written so as not to cost votes.

The soldier votes. The small saver votes. The Far North wage earner votes. A Norilsk Nickel shareholder weighs less at the ballot box.

And yet a 349-seat majority needed none of these precautions to pass a bill.

So why take them?

A regime that counts its seats never forgets to count its grievances.

The bill steers clear of the crowd.

The bill already paid

VAT at 22%

I do have to correct my own reading, though.

The broad bill, Russian households are already paying it.

Value-added tax went from 20% to 22% in 2026, The Moscow Times and Kommersant recall. Income tax became progressive in 2025. Corporate profit tax went up.

VAT, everybody pays. On every loaf of bread. Every litre of gasoline. Every pair of children’s boots.

Raised ahead of the vote, not after

Those increases took effect before the election.

The party in power still hit 349.

Put plainly, the broad bill didn’t cost the record.

The regime draws a simple lesson. You can raise VAT in the middle of a war and keep the chamber.

The 2027 bill comes after.

Finer. More targeted. Better placed on the calendar.

Most of the tab was already on the table.

A 5.5 trillion hole

A deficit that doubles

Revenue in 2027: 43.3 trillion rubles. Spending: 48.8. The gap, by Kommersant’s calculation: about 5.5 trillion.

For 2026, the ministry expects a deficit of 3% of GDP. The plan said 1.6%.

Almost double.

Growth: 0.6% in 2026. 1.4% forecast for 2027. Investment: minus 5.4% this year, again according to Kommersant.

The oil reference price, above which the money goes to the National Wealth Fund, drops from US$59 to US$50 a barrel.

The war’s share, left blank

In the 2026 budget, defence and security made up 38% of spending, the paper recalls.

For 2027, that number isn’t published.

The budget gives the price of a foreign parcel: a 100-ruble fee per package worth less than 200 euros. It keeps quiet about the share for its tanks.

A parcel has a rate. The war has no line.

And if the barrel drops below that reference price…

A deficit is debt. And war debt gets repaid later, in taxes nobody has voted on yet.

The heaviest line is the only one missing.

Two trillion to find

Targeted social aid

Taxes aren’t enough.

Siluanov also announces more than 2 trillion rubles a year in what he calls spending optimization.

He spells it out. Public sector efficiency. A stronger principle of targeting and need for social benefits. Priority for projects already under way.

In other words, less help for anyone who can’t prove they need it.

Who pays without a vote

Less help for the pensioner who will have to prove hardship. Less help for the family whose allowance will be targeted. Less help for the neighbourhood whose project won’t start.

These people have no line in the speeches. They have a line in the budget.

They didn’t vote for 349 seats any more than anyone else.

They’ll pay anyway.

Who, among the 349, will stand up for their service counter?

The counter doesn’t ask who you voted for. It asks for paperwork. A proof of income. A certificate. One more line to stand in.

A war economy is also paid for at the service counter.

A Duma with no votes against

Five parties, one budget

Five parties enter the Duma. Plus Rodina. Plus four independents.

None of the five is Yabloko.

This isn’t an opposition. This isn’t a debating chamber. This isn’t a check on power. It’s a calendar.

Who pays, and for how many years

The question isn’t whether the budget will pass.

With 349 seats, the party in power needs no votes from the other four parties.

The other 101 members can amend, protest, bargain over a line. They can block nothing.

The real question lies elsewhere. Who will pay, and for how many years.

The draft covers 2027, 2028 and 2029. Three years of defence spending budgeted in advance.

Three years, with defence at the top of the list.

The vote is locked in. The duration isn’t.

What Kyiv can read

Three years of priorities

The priority, as Siluanov wrote it on the 24th: the needs of defence and security, and support for fighters and their families.

A regime that puts three years of defence at the top of the list is not, by every indication, preparing a peace for spring.

And yet it is tightening. It targets a 2.2% deficit after 3%. It lowers its reference oil price. It taxes its own mines.

A regime that squeezes its own mines needs money.

The bill Moscow writes itself

This is where the West can read what the war costs the budget that pays for it.

A deficit nearly double the plan. Growth under 1%. Investment falling.

These aren’t Ukrainian estimates. They are the Russian government’s numbers, picked up by Moscow’s business press.

For Kyiv, the reading cuts two ways. The Kremlin is giving itself the means to last. And it is paying for that endurance at a rising price, line after line, tax after tax.

A record majority doesn’t fill a treasury.

The Kremlin has the seats. It’s still looking for the money.

The work begins

The 30th, then the 1st

On September 30 at 10 a.m., 450 members take their seats.

349 carry the same label. 46 have worn the uniform.

The budget awaits them before October 1. With its tax hikes. Its 6%. Its spared soldiers. Its defence line left blank.

The only party that campaigned for peace isn’t in the room.

Five years to the next vote

Who, in a chamber of 450 seats, will speak for the taxpayer on the day the war tax is voted?

The next parliamentary election is five years away.

The meter is already running.

Polls closed, 349 seats filled, and taxes open the session.

Sources:

Primary Sources:

• Office of the Russian President — decree convening the Duma on September 30, September 25, 2026
• Russian Government — cabinet meeting on the 2027-2029 budget, September 24, 2026
• TASS — final results and the Duma’s convening, September 25, 2026

Secondary Sources:

• Meduza — 349 seats and 46 war veterans elected, September 25, 2026
• The Moscow Times — record majority in an uncompetitive vote, September 25, 2026
• Kommersant — the 2027 budget and its tax increases, September 24, 2026