United Russia

We were talking about Russia.

You had mentioned Russian-Syrian relations.

And...

I'm just obsessed with Syria, have been for a while now.

They sea-lifted, at the conclusion of hostilities, the Soviet Union sea-lifted over 60,000 tons of materials to Syria to replenish losses.

You know, like infrastructural, military, you know, like foodstuffs, like you name it.

The one kind of blip in Soviet or Russian-Syrian relations came in 76.

The Soviets were displeased when Assad... deployed the Syrian Arab Army to Lebanon, and something of a diplomatic rift emerged.

Officials in Gaza have announced plans to evacuate and demolish more than two hundred and fifty buildings because they're at risk of collapsing.

Also in this podcast, as expected in Russia's parliamentary elections, President Putin's United Russia party is on course to retain its constitutional majority.

So what impact will this result have? And a trial in the UK monitors how gadgets and sensors might help people with dementia live in their own homes.

That's the power of technology.

Katya Adler.

From one set of polls in Germany to another in Russia's parliamentary elections.

President Putin's United Russia party is on course to retain its constitutional majority.

It has won a record number of seats, and the near complete results will ensure it can continue to make changes to the constitution without support from other parties.

You've got token parties that people can vote for.

Putin and his ruling United Russia party always seem to get 65% of the vote, but they had, you know, you could go to university in the UK and be a political analyst, but in Russia you can actually study to be a political technologist, which helps you game.

They were gaming the system basically.

And you learn how to do it well because they wanted to give people an idea.

publicly expressed support for Russia's aggression in Ukraine and was previously denied a visa for a gymnastics competition in Croatia in August.

Melnikova has also voiced backing for Putin and even ran as a candidate for the ruling United Russia party in local election primaries last year.

In turn, Kalmykova holds a sports contract with the Russian National Guard.

Ukraine's Starlink access has been restricted without warning, severely disrupting several military missions.

So another plenary session is behind us, which means today we'll bring you an overview of the past week in Strasbourg.

As always, there were plenty of debates and votes, and we'll cover the most important ones, from negotiations on the EU's next long-term budget and Europe's relationship with China, to investment in the defense industry and Russia's sham elections.

But first, at the beginning of the week, the European Parliament welcomed another key EPP figure, Portuguese Prime Minister Luis Montenegro, who brought Portugal's experience to the plenary floor.

The prime minister began by recalling that Portugal was in a very difficult, even traumatic situation 15 years ago.

And at a time where people doubt and people have fears, and sometimes reject even the European project, we should all remind our citizens about this great example of people who made the choice to believe in Europe and who turned this belief into a reality, a very positive reality for Portugal and Europe.

But while Portugal's economic trajectory was presented as a European success story, another major debate focused on a much more challenging relationship, that one of EU with China.

Fair competition, China's support for Russia, human rights, and Taiwan were all raised during this week's debate.

The EPP Group's position is clear.

Today, we wonder why a squadron of B1 bombers had to leave the UK back for the US so hastily.

Is the threat Iran or Russia even? In addition, we wonder how far Putin will go as he attacks Kyiv the very moment German Chancellor Merz arrived in the Ukrainian capital.

Finally, it looks like Ukraine has its own ballistic missile now and is finding new ways to stop jet-powered Russian drones.

I wanna welcome back our friend Charlie Hancock of The Moscow Times.

She serves as-

...

the opinion editor.

When not editing op-eds, she can be found at NATO headquarters, security conferences, or working on her master's dissertation about the Russian Air Force.

Before the annexation of Crimea and the invasion of Ukraine, Russia was still trying to gain recognition in the West.

It funded artistic films that criticized elements of Russian social and political life, provided that those films did not criticize Putin or United Russia directly.

Since in this film all the corruption occurs at the local level and federal officials are never implicated, the Russian state was happy to fund it.

But the director, Yuri Bykov, has been unable to make more films of this type in the years following its release.

So this seems like this would be barely even news in a functioning electoral democracy.

Dozens detained at an authorized Communist Party rail- rally after chants of "Down with the Tsar." Now, this seems like incredibly routine stuff.

The, a political party has a rally, it turns into a riot, and authorities have to intervene and arrest the participants.

Not really anything that's newsworthy, right? Wrong, because this is in Russia, and this is where things get crazy.

So we peel back some layers, the first of which is that you might say, "Communist Party? Guys, I thought the Communist Party was one of the major Putin cutouts that are allowed to exist in the State Duma." And you would be absolutely correct.

It, in fact, agrees with the Kremlin stance on every foreign policy and economic question.

In fact, it simply exists largely to scoop up the votes of b- of aging boomer Russians who remember fondly the days of the Communist Party and are sure that this time when they vote for the Communist Party, it's gonna bring back the good old days.

And but of course, the Communist Party is staffed almost exclusively by people hand-chosen by Vladimir Putin, and they hold a, a, a minority of seats within the State Duma, but conveniently, when Putin wants any policy passed, the Communist Party always votes completely in line with Putin's primary party, the United Russia Party.

So we've mentioned elections, and people of course are not generally gonna be that interested in Russian elections, so we're gonna speak about both elections and the ever-growing rampaging bear population to keep things a little bit, uh, uh, more exciting, keep the listeners on their toes.

So United Russia has just emerged from the recent Duma elections with 349 out of 450 seats.

Obviously this is a super majority, and it's their biggest share ever.

You described the party's bear mascot as looking rather fat and smug.

And this leads to the question, what does the actual result and the need for that rigging tell us about Russian society?

It tells us that Russians are not very happy.

I mean, the, the official results were 60% turnout, 58% for Putin's United Russia party.

Now people who much, much more sort of mathematically capable than me have crunched the numbers and actually suggest that it looks more like as if the actual turnout was 40%, which c- given the amount of pressure to try and get people to vote, employers busing their employees to the polling stations and so forth, is a low result, even though obviously by genuine democratic standards 40% isn't too bad.

And people have been mobilized.

And who knows the true attrition rate in the Russo-Ukrainian special military operation war? And allegedly, United Russia won even more seats and more votes than it has before ever in its entire history.

So apparently, the loss of Russian or Israeli allies may not necessarily lead to the unpopularity of the ruling regime party, apparently.

Or, I mean...