Russia wraps up first wartime parliamentary election with Kremlin dominance all but assured

Russia's first wartime parliamentary election was due to end Sunday, virtually devoid of opposition to President Vladimir Putin's policies and all but certain to cement the Kremlin’s dominance. The last day of the election came as Ukrainian forces fired more than 1,000 drones at Russia overnight, including hundreds that were launched toward Moscow.

The vote began Friday, and authorities encouraged online balloting to boost turnout among its 111 million eligible voters.

For the first time, the election included residents of four Ukrainian regions that Moscow illegally annexed after the war began but still doesn’t fully control. Voting is also taking place in Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula that was illegally annexed by Russia in 2014.

Authorities in Kyiv denounced the voting in the Russian-held areas as illegal and urged foreign governments not to recognize the result. The European Union on Friday called the action a “blatant violation of international law.”

The Kremlin wants the parliamentary election — the first since the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 — to showcase popular support for the war and legitimize its action. It has sought to avoid political risks by stamping out any dissent.

A massive state media campaign and tight control over the election in the absence of genuine opposition all but assure the Kremlin will keep tight control of Russian politics amid mounting economic costs and increasing Ukrainian drone attacks deep inside the country.

Voters cast two separate ballots, filling half of the Duma’s 450 seats by selecting political parties listed on the ballot. The rest are contested in single-seat constituencies, with voters choosing individual candidates.

Preliminary results are expected within hours of voting ending in the country’s west.

The main Kremlin party, United Russia, is widely expected to retain its overwhelming control of the lower house, the State Duma. Several smaller parties of the “systemic opposition” that vote in sync with Putin's views on all key issues also are expected to maintain their presence.

The liberal Yabloko party, the only registered political entity that dared to publicly criticize the war, was removed from the ballot last month by Russia’s Supreme Court, and only has a few dozen candidates in the single-constituency races. Additionally, some anti-war politicians were imprisoned or forced to flee abroad ahead of the campaign.

Yabloko and the Communist Party, which has criticized some aspects of government policy but carefully avoided any criticism of Putin, said many of their observers were turned away from polling stations.

Russia didn’t invite observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, with the Russian Foreign Ministry accusing the body of “double standards” for its criticism of Russia. OSCE Parliamentary Assembly President Pere Joan Pons said that the decision was a breach of Russia’s commitments as a member state of the organization.

Yabloko reported that one of its observers lost consciousness while being arrested by police at a St. Petersburg polling station on Saturday, after officials accused him of trying to “disrupt the elections” and called police.

The parties reported violations including sealed ballot boxes being opened, doors to polling stations not being secured overnight, and a refusal to issue paper ballots. The claims could not be independently verified.

At one polling station in the Russian-held part of the Donetsk region, voters dropped their ballots in a box as an armed Russian soldier stood nearby and watched.

Ella Pamfilova, head of Russia’s Central Election Commission, said Sunday that the electronic voting system had been targeted by cyberattacks in Moscow.

SotaVision, an independent Russian news outlet, said Sunday that voters were reporting glitches in the electronic registry systems at polling stations across Moscow. People were not issued paper ballots and instead were asked to vote via an electronic terminal, the outlet said on Telegram.

Leonid Volkov, a close associate of the late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, suggested the supposed breakdown of the system used to issue paper ballots in Moscow may have been deliberate, aimed at pushing voters toward electronic voting.

“Demand a paper ballot!” he wrote on X on Sunday.

Having urged supporters to spoil party-list ballots, Yabloko party leader Nikolai Rybakov cast a ballot in St. Petersburg on Sunday, covered in bright green writing declaring “For freedom," “For peace,” and “Yabloko.”

Russia’s exiled opposition, including the widow of Alexei Navalny, Yulia Navalnaya, called on anti-war Russians to cast their votes at noon on Sunday.

Thousands of Russians living in Armenia took part in the vote. Russian citizens lined up outside the Russian Embassy in the capital, Yerevan, on Sunday, to join the “Noon for a Peaceful Russia” anti-war demonstration. Some held anti-war and anti-Putin posters.

In Germany, voters cast their ballots at the Russian Embassy in Berlin. Andrei Pivovarov, a Russian dissident and former head of the Open Russia group, addressed a protest gathered outside the building.

The election's last day came against a backdrop of a major wave of Ukrainian attacks. Russia’s Defense Ministry said Sunday that its forces shot down a total of 1,110 Ukrainian drones across Russia, as well as over the annexed Crimea and the Black Sea.

Two people were killed and 20 wounded across the wider Moscow region, local Gov. Andrei Vorobyov said.

The election follows a summer of Ukraine’s long-range drone strikes on oil refineries that triggered a widespread fuel crisis. Warehouses belonging to online retailers Wildberries and Ozon also were attacked. Those attacks have exacerbated economic problems and brought the war home for millions.

A voter looks through a ballot during the parliamentary election in Moscow, Sunday, Sept. 20, 2026. (AP Photo/Pavel Bednyakov)

Russian political activist Andrei Pivovarov speaks during a protest in front of Russian embassy as people cast their vote for the Russian parliament election in Berlin, Germany, Sunday, Sept. 20, 2026. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)

Russian citizens line up outside the Russian Embassy to join an anti-war demonstration to protest the ruling United Russia party and Moscow's ongoing invasion of Ukraine in Yerevan, Armenia, Sunday, Sept. 20, 2026, during the final day of Russia's parliamentary elections. (AP Photo/Anthony Pizzoferrato)

Yabloko party leader Nikolai Rybakov casts a ballot with a writing in Russian reading "For freedom" during the parliamentary election in St. Petersburg, Russia, Sunday, Sept. 20, 2026. (AP Photo/Dmitri Lovetsky)

A voter casts a ballot in the parliamentary election in Moscow, Sunday, Sept. 20, 2026. (AP Photo/Pavel Bednyakov)

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump has renewed his attacks on the Federal Reserve after it hiked its benchmark interest rate Wednesday, but the Fed matters less than broader economic trends when it comes to longer-term borrowing costs, economists say.

The economy is growing steadily despite being hit with repeated shocks — and may even be accelerating — while inflation remains stubbornly high. And big tech firms are borrowing huge amounts of cash to plow into data center construction while the federal government is still running large yearly budget deficits. All these trends point to higher interest rates regardless of what the Fed does, analysts say.

As a result, the low interest-rate, low-inflation world that lasted for nearly 15 years after the Great Recession is over and a higher-priced, higher-rate world is taking its place. Mortgage rates fell into the 3% range in the 2010s and even lower during COVID-19, but such deals are long gone. The average 30-year mortgage rate reached 6.95% last week, the highest in more than a year and a half.

Joe Brusuelas, chief economist at RSM, a tax consulting firm, said that a big reason for the change is a shift from the pre-pandemic economy in which consumer and business demand was weak, to the current economy in which healthy consumer and business spending is colliding with supply shocks and bottlenecks. In addition to higher oil and gas prices because of the Iran war, the AI buildout has struggled with an insufficient supply of computer chips, electronic equipment, and workers to put it all together.

“We’ve undergone a structural transformation of the economy,” Brusuelas said. “The regime change in inflation and interest rates is the outcome.”

The shift, in many ways, returns the economy to where it was before the financial crisis in December 2007 that lasted through June 2009.

But even after the downturn ended, consumer and business spending remained weak. Millions of Americans in the 2010s focused on paying down outsized mortgages and credit card debt instead. Businesses saw few investment opportunities, and many big tech firms such as Alphabet’s Google and Meta’s Facebook piled up cash.

Now those companies are using those stockpiles to build out AI data centers, and are borrowing even more money to do so. And American consumers — despite surveys finding they are pessimistic about the economy — are still spending at a healthy pace. A recent report showing that retail sales picked up last month led economists at Bank of America to forecast growth will reach a healthy 3% at an annual rate in the July-September quarter.

Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Warsh highlighted the shift in a speech at the central bank's annual conference in Jackson Hole, Wyoming last month.

After 2008, “it was a widely held view that an excess of capital would sit on the sidelines for a long, long time, because there just wouldn’t be enough compelling investment opportunities,” Warsh said. “All the good stuff had been invented. So growth would be low and slow.

“Well, times sure have changed,” he continued. “Ever-expanding pools of capital are pouring into AI-related infrastructure of all sorts.”

The additional spending and investment has contributed to higher longer-term interest rates on government bonds that are competing for lenders. The yield on the 10-year Treasury bond topped 5% this year for the first time since 2023, even before the Fed raised its benchmark short-term rate Wednesday.

At the same time, political polling and consumer sentiment surveys continue to find that many Americans are struggling to keep up with rising prices, and affordability remains a top concern heading into the midterm elections. Even as the economy expands, inflation has outpaced the annual growth in average wages for the past five months.

Brusuelas said the U.S. economy's expansion is “imbalanced” with growth “entirely dependent” on the AI buildout and strong spending by wealthier consumers, who have benefited from rising stock prices driven by hopes that AI will lift profits.

After the Fed lifted its rate to 3.9% Wednesday, Trump said on Truth Social that U.S. rates should be 1% instead.

Yet many of Trump's policies have contributed to higher borrowing costs, in particular the Iran war that has driven up gas prices. When inflation persists, investors demand higher interest rates on longer-term Treasury bonds, such as the 10-year, which strongly influences mortgage rates.

“The president can say he wants interest rates lower all he wants, and yet he continues to push the button on all the policies that raise rates," said Elizabeth Pancotti, vice president of policy, advocacy and research at the progressive Groundwork Collaborative.

Federal Reserve Board Chairman Kevin Warsh speaks during a news conference at the Federal Reserve in Washington, Wednesday, Sept. 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

Federal Reserve Board Chairman Kevin Warsh speaks during a news conference at the Federal Reserve in Washington, Wednesday, Sept. 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)