MOSCOW, June 28 (Reuters) – Russia’s ruling party on Sunday announced it would run an injured Ukraine war veteran and a television war correspondent, alongside the country’s foreign minister and the mayor of Moscow, as lead candidates in a parliamentary election due in September.
Speaking at United Russia’s pre-election congress, party chairman and former president Dmitry Medvedev said that Ukraine war veteran Vladislav Golovin and state television war correspondent Yevgeny Poddubny would head the party’s candidate list.
United Russia has won large majorities in every national Russian election it has contested, though polling shows it is significantly less popular than President Vladimir Putin.
Despite a difficult backdrop of an ongoing war and fuel shortages driven by Ukrainian drone strikes, United Russia is likely to secure a large majority, bolstered by Putin’s support and a tame parliamentary opposition that broadly supports the Kremlin’s line on Ukraine.
Putin himself won a fresh term as president in 2024, keeping him in office until at least 2030.
Golovin, 29, rose to prominence in state media in 2022 as a naval infantry platoon commander in the battle for the Ukrainian port of Mariupol, during which he was wounded. Reporter Poddubny was also wounded in 2024, during fighting in Russia’s Kursk region.
Also among the top five are Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin, two of Russia’s most prominent and popular officials. Maria Lvova-Belova, Russia’s commissioner for children’s rights, is also included the list.
Though prominent national figures often feature among its candidates, they do not always take up seats in the lower house of parliament, the State Duma.
Putin has repeatedly said that he wants veterans of the Ukraine war to enter politics as Russia’s new elite.
(Reporting by Reuters; Writing by Felix Light; Editing by Christina Fincher)
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