00:00Russia's ruling party has won the country's first wartime parliamentary elections.
00:05United Russia had nearly 58% of the vote, with more than 95% of the votes counted.
00:11But this was an election with no real opposition to President Vladimir Putin.
00:18The election took place amid tight restrictions on political opposition,
00:22with critics of Putin's government largely barred from contesting,
00:25while several anti-war politicians have also been jailed or forced to leave the country.
00:30The Yabloko party, the only registered party openly opposing the war,
00:34was removed from the nationwide ballot ahead of the election.
00:37Some Yabloko candidates were still allowed to run for individual seats,
00:41but that gives the party little chance of building a meaningful presence in Parliament.
00:46The Kremlin has presented the vote as a show of support for its policies, including the war in Ukraine.
00:52The three-day vote began on Friday, with 111 million people eligible to cast their ballots.
00:58It also included voting in four Ukrainian regions that Moscow claims to have annexed,
01:03but does not fully control, as well as Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014.
01:09Kiev has condemned the voting in Russian-held Ukrainian territory as illegal,
01:13while the European Union has called it a blatant violation of international law.
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