(Adnkronos) – The outgoing State Duma ‘speaker’ Vyacheslav Volodin has been re-elected with over 92 percent of the votes for a single-mandate seat in the Saratov constituency, according to the vote count results, relating to the tabulation of just over 4 percent of the votes, released by the Central Election Commission. The Communist Party candidate, Denis Bulatov, with 4.11 percent of the votes, ranked second. In the 2021 legislative elections, Volodin, a prominent member of United Russia considered very close to Vladimir Putin, whose ‘spin doctor’ he was for a long time, and Speaker of the Duma since 2016, had been elected, always in the same constituency, considered his stronghold, with approximately 72.11 percent of the votes.
The legislative elections that have just concluded in Russia are the first in which independent observers, not only international but also from organizations with a widespread presence in the territory like Golos, are not participating, forced to close last year after the five-year prison sentence of its co-chairman Grigory Melkonyants.
