RIA gives United Russia 74.81% in occupied Kherson; The Insider says real turnout was about 20% below the official figure

The official shares. RIA Novosti, a state agency, gives United Russia 74.81% in Kherson region and 60.09% in Amur region. We hold only the headlines of those two reports. Neither headline says how the vote was run. Neither says Kherson is under occupation.

The turnout challenge. The Insider, an exile outlet, says real turnout was "about 20% lower than the official figure". It credits "analysts" but names none. We hold its headline only. It gives no method and no official figure to compare against.

Who takes the seats. Vot Tak counts "at least 53" people who took part in "the Russian invasion of Ukraine" who are due to become deputies. That is almost 12% of the 450 seats. It says Ukrainian law enforcement accuses some of them of war crimes. No other report we hold counts or names them.

What is not settled

• The official national turnout. No report we hold gives it.
• Who the analysts are, and how they reached 20%.
• How voting was run in occupied Kherson. No report we hold describes it, and no report we hold shows anyone outside Russia's election system checking the count.
• Whether anyone besides Vot Tak confirms the 53.

What this is about. Russia has held its first election to the State Duma since it began the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The count includes Ukrainian land that Russia occupies.

How it got here. The State Duma is the lower house of Russia's parliament. It has 450 seats and is elected every five years. The last election was in September 2021. Five months later, in February 2022, Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The war itself began in 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea and backed armed separatists in the Donbas.

In September 2022 Russia declared that it had annexed four Ukrainian regions: Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson. It did so after votes that Ukraine and most UN member states do not recognise. Russia does not hold all of that land. Ukraine retook Kherson city in November 2022. Russia runs elections in the parts it holds and counts them as Russian regions.

The actors. United Russia is the ruling party and backs President Vladimir Putin. Russia's Central Election Commission runs the vote and publishes the official results. Independent election monitors and much of the independent press have been labelled foreign agents, prosecuted or pushed into exile. That is why challenges to official figures now come mostly from outlets working outside the country. Ukraine treats any vote held on its occupied land as illegitimate. In 2024 the Kremlin set up the "Time of Heroes" programme to move veterans of the war into public office.

What is at stake. A Duma that counts occupied regions as Russia's own makes those claims harder to undo in any settlement. Seats held by war veterans tie the parliament more closely to the war.

Where it stands. Results are still coming in region by region. The official national turnout, and whether it can be trusted, is disputed.