The State Duma called the vote against United Russia a show of support for Zelenskyy
Oleg Matveichev, deputy chairman of the Russian State Duma’s Committee on Information Policy, stated that voting against the “United Russia” party in the September 18–20 elections allegedly amounts to support for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
According to the Russian lawmaker, voters participating in the election are supposedly faced with a choice between Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Ukrainian leader.
In his column, Matveichev claims that Zelenskyy is allegedly interested in the defeat of “United Russia” in the upcoming elections.
“Zelenskyy recently made it clear that he dreams of ‘United Russia’s’ defeat in the fall elections and will do everything possible to achieve this. Russian voters now essentially face a simple choice: whose side are they on—Putin’s or Zelenskyy’s? If they’re with Putin, they vote for ‘United Russia.’ If they’re with Zelenskyy, they vote against it. There is no other option,” the lawmaker wrote.
In this way, the Russian lawmaker effectively equated voting against the ruling party with supporting the Ukrainian president, linking a domestic political choice to a foreign policy confrontation.
It is worth noting that calls to end the war against Ukraine are growing increasingly frequent in Russian government circles amid a deteriorating economic situation and rising public discontent.
Alexei Zhuravlev, first deputy chairman of the Russian State Duma’s Defense Committee, stated that it is necessary to destroy railway stations, bridges, and tunnels in Ukraine to block all logistics, and also called for a large-scale operation to advance occupation forces to the Dnipro River and capture Kyiv.
