United Russia’s primaries featured hundreds of war veterans — but most were already seasoned politicians, not ordinary soldiers

United Russia has wrapped up its primary elections ahead of the State Duma vote, and the ruling party and the Kremlin’s domestic policy team fell short of the 10% voter turnout target they had set for themselves. Official figures put the final turnout at 9.03%.

Journalists at 7×7, an outlet that covers events in Russia’s regions, calculated that 43 war participants won votes in regional list and single-member district races out of 478 who had entered the party’s primaries nationwide. ”SVO” veterans also placed second, third, and lower in the primaries.

The 7×7 count excluded Russia-occupied Ukrainian territories — Crimea, Sevastopol, and parts of the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia regions. According to Meduza’s count, four war participants won in those territories. That puts the number of military personnel who could become United Russia deputies in the State Duma at a minimum of 47.

Assessing their chances of securing genuinely viable spots is difficult, however. First, those spots could go to politicians who did not participate in the primaries at all. Second, the primaries have no bearing on the federal portion of the party list — their results affect only the regional portion, where governors, who traditionally serve as the top draws on the ticket, are guaranteed the leading positions. In most regions, that means military candidates who won the primaries will end up in second place at best.

The final roster of candidates will be confirmed at United Russia’s party congress on June 28.

What we know about the ‘SVO soldiers’ who won the primaries

Vladimir Putin calls military personnel the “real” and “genuine elite” and pushes for their advancement into politics by every available means. To that end, his administration’s domestic policy team and regional authorities run personnel development programs for war participants.

The most prominent is “Vremya Geroev” (“Time of Heroes”), run by ANO Rossiya — Strana Vozmozhnostey (Russia — Land of Opportunity), the traditional organizer of Kremlin talent competitions. Regional programs include “Geroi. Nizhegorodskaya Oblast” (“Heroes. Nizhny Novgorod region”) and “Zashchitniki. Pod Krylom Arkhangela” (“Defenders. Under the Archangel’s Wing”) in the Arkhangelsk region. The organizers claim these programs train war participants in “management practices” and “teamwork.”

Significant posts, however, tend to go not to ordinary soldiers but to experienced officials and deputies who have served at the front. In November 2024, for instance, Yevgeny Pervyshov became governor of the Tambov region after serving as mayor of Krasnodar until 2021 and then as a State Duma deputy. In the fall of 2022, the Russian state news agency TASS reported, Pervyshov enlisted in the Russian army as a volunteer and served in BARS “Kaskad,” known as the “deputies’ unit.”

BARS “Kaskad” is a volunteer aerial reconnaissance and drone aviation unit. As the outlet Poligon and British intelligence found, serving in “Kaskad” allows politicians to be listed as serving at the front while barely exposing themselves to danger — they can freely leave the combat zone to work in the State Duma or take vacations.

Another politician-soldier in power is Tambov native Alexei Kondratyev. According to a biographical profile on the “Veteran SVO” website, he also went to the front as a volunteer. In August 2024, following Ukraine’s incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, Kondratyev took part in the evacuation of civilians. That same year, he became a senator from that border region in the Federation Council, the upper house of Russia’s parliament. This wasn’t the start of his political career: from 2010 to 2015 he served as mayor of Tambov, and for five years after that, he represented the region in the Federation Council.

When it comes to preferential treatment for military personnel with political experience — or politicians with a military background — the State Duma candidate selection this year was no exception. Meduza calculated that 21 of the 47 primary winners who identify themselves as war participants had already built successful civilian careers before the start of the full-scale war.

Seven of the “military” candidates are sitting State Duma deputies who served in the “deputies’ unit” BARS “Kaskad.” They include:

• Vitaly Milonov, known for his homophobic statements;
• Dmitry Sablin, who sued Alexey Navalny over his “honor and dignity”;
• Adam Delimkhanov, one of Ramzan Kadyrov’s closest allies;
• oncological surgeon Badma Bashankaev, who claims to have traveled to the front on multiple occasions to perform operations on wounded soldiers and give “master classes” to military medics;
• political strategist and former prime minister of the self-proclaimed “Donetsk People’s Republic,” Alexander Borodai;
• Chelyabinsk deputy Oleg Golikov.

Also listed on the primaries website as a war participant is Novosibirsk deputy Oleg Ivaninsky — though nothing is known about his military experience.

Thirteen of the primary winners who identify themselves as war participants are federal and regional officials, deputies of regional legislative assemblies or city councils in major cities, businesspeople, and prominent politicians.

For example:

• Alexandra Rodionova, head of a department at the federal Health Ministry who went to the front as part of a humanitarian mission at the start of the full-scale invasion, took first place on the list in the Amur region;
• in Yakutia, Pyotr Shamayev is running in a single-member district; he’s a former republic-level minister of youth affairs who left for the war in September 2024 and returned to Russia in February 2025, reportedly after being wounded;
• in Karelia, the speaker of the regional legislative assembly, Elissan Shandalovich, won the list primary; in 2024 he spent six months working as a doctor at a field hospital in the self-proclaimed “Luhansk People’s Republic;”
• in the Magadan region, travel blogger Bogdan Bulychev, who calls himself the “ambassador of the Arctic and the Far East,” won the single-member district race. He went to the front at the end of 2025 and served with the volunteer unit BARS-8 “Khabarovsk”;
• in the Kursk region, Anton Tsvetkov came first on the list. His official biography lists only one position — deputy commander of the volunteer brigade “BARS-Kursk.” In reality, Tsvetkov is also a well-known pro-government civic figure, chairman of the presidium of the public organization “Officers of Russia” and a former member of the federal Public Chamber;
• in the Pskov region, construction businessman and president of the Federal Field Hockey Association of Russia Anton Moroz took first place (when and in what capacity he traveled to the combat zone is not specified).

Of the 26 genuinely military candidates who won the primaries, eight serve as commanders or deputy commanders of large units. For example:

• Andrei Strizhak, commander of the 51st Parachute Regiment, will run as a single-member district candidate from the Tula region;
• Eduard Shonov, deputy director general of the “Federal Center for Unmanned Aviation Systems,” will run as a single-member district candidate from Moscow.

Some military candidates have also worked as officials in regional and municipal administrations and even federal institutions:

• Baldan Tsydypov, who went to war at the start of the full-scale invasion at age 23, is running in a single-member district from Zabaykalsky Krai. He is said to have helped rescue 150 soldiers from an ambush in March 2022, was wounded, and returned home. He now heads the department for patriotic work at the Znaniye society;
• former airborne assault platoon commander Dmitry Grachev will run as a single-member district candidate in the Nizhny Novgorod region; he currently serves as deputy minister of regional security.

A source within United Russia’s leadership who spoke to Meduza said party officials, the Kremlin’s domestic policy team, and regional administrations are working to ensure that “military candidates are as predictable as possible” for the Kremlin — which is why preference goes to politicians and officials with “substantial civilian work experience” and to officers and military personnel “who have already been tested in civilian administrations.”

A political strategist working with the domestic policy team was more direct:

What else was notable about these primaries

Unlike previous primaries, these passed almost without scandal.

In mid-May, former State Duma deputy speaker Sergei Neverov unexpectedly withdrew from the race in the Smolensk region, where he had intended to run in a single-member district, and called on voters to support a soldier and Smolensk city council deputy, Artyom Kornyuchenkov. But Kornyuchenkov also decided not to participate. The district was ultimately won by Smolensk city council deputy Sergei Yakimov. According to Meduza’s sources, however, he will not run a campaign so as not to stand in the way of a high-profile deputy from A Just Russia, federal parliament deputy speaker Alexander Babakov — the candidate the Kremlin has already approved for that district.

In Moscow, actor Dmitry Dyuzhev finished 32nd, receiving just 2,700 votes — nearly a hundred times fewer than the top vote-getter, State Duma deputy speaker Pyotr Tolstoy. A Meduza source in United Russia’s Moscow branch said Dyuzhev “was not invited to run and no one sees him in the Duma.”

According to that source, neither the actor’s candidacy nor his result “bothered anyone, except probably himself” — unlike the situation with t.A.T.u. singer Yulia Volkova ahead of the 2021 State Duma elections. At the time, she entered the primaries in a single-member district in the Ivanovo region and recorded two videos criticizing both the current authorities and the opposition.

Volkova’s campaign provoked strong displeasure from the regional administration, which had been counting on a smooth process and the subsequent nomination of Maxim Kizeyev, the chief physician of the Reshma sanatorium. Volkova lost the vote, as expected.

This year, the primaries in Zabaykalsky Krai were lost by the region’s incumbent deputy, General Andrei Gurulev. A source close to the Putin administration told Meduza that his candidacy was “freelance”: no one had approved Gurulev’s nomination. Gurulev is a regular on propaganda television programs. He has proposed launching a nuclear strike on the Netherlands and bringing back the Gulag. Those and other inflammatory statements got him removed from the State Duma’s defense committee and transferred to the local self-government committee, so that his remarks would not be associated with the work of the defense department.

“He’s too scandalous — he does [the Kremlin] more harm than good. They tried to rein him in, promised to let him extend his mandate and run in a different region. But he kept going,” the source said.

Previously, a Meduza source close to the Putin administration’s domestic policy team said: “The Kremlin does not need too many military personnel in parliament: the authorities understand that they risk ending up with a new influential force in the country’s highest legislative body.” The United Russia primaries results confirm that trend: war veterans will not constitute a majority even on the ruling party’s list, and most of them have long been working as officials or holding seats as deputies.