Putin's party set to win wartime elections - after Ukraine launched drone blitz on polling day
The United Russia Party, which is in power, is expected to comfortably win Russia's parliamentary election, according to partial official results released on Saturday.
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Moscow is using the election to gauge levels of public support for the war in Ukraine, which entered its fourth year in February.
The vote will elect a new State Duma, in what critics have described as a tightly controlled election, with serious opposition largely excluded.
Early results show the ruling United Russia party leading with 57.5% of the vote.
The majority of the country's anti-war parties were blocked from entering the ballot before voting across Russia's 11 time zones got under way.
The decision was reached after the Supreme Court declared that the liberal Yabloko party, which is pushing for a ceasefire, had breached electoral rules. The Yabloko party has denied this claim.
Despite the court's decision, some Yabloko candidates are standing in single-member constituencies, which make up half of the 450 seats in the lower house of parliament.
Yabloko's leader, Nikolai Rybakov, publicly spoiled his ballot paper in response to the decision, adding his party's name and the slogan "For peace" onto the sheet.
Other parties allowed to stand, including the New People party and Just Russia, were some way behind in the polling, but remained on course to gain seats in the State Duma.
The deputy chairman of Russia's Security Council and former president, Dmitry Medvedev, said United Russia had run a dignified campaign.
Meanwhile on the last day of the election, three people were killed and part of an oil refinery was damaged in what Russian officials have described as the largest Ukrainian drone attack.
Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said more than 1,600 drones had been shot down since Saturday, including 450 which he said were heading towards the capital.
He claimed the attack was aimed at disrupting the vote.
“The unprecedented attack was clearly planned with the aim of disrupting the elections,” he said in a Telegram post.
“The adversary failed to achieve this.”
Central Election Commission Chairwoman (CEC) Ella Pamfilova said the latest drone attacks had not deterred people from going to polling stations.
"The more pressure they put on us, the more we are seeing an unprecedented level of what I would call public unity," RIA news agency quoted her as saying.
Kyiv, which has prevented elections from taking place under martial law, has described the referendum as "pseudo election".