Putin claims Ukraine interference as Russia holds parliamentary elections amid war

As Russia held parliamentary elections amid an ongoing war, Vladimir Putin accused Ukraine of interference — a charge that arrived not in a vacuum but in a political landscape where opposition voices had already been silenced and ballots were cast in territories seized by force. The election unfolded less as a contest of ideas than as a ceremony of ratification, extending even into occupied Ukrainian land. In this, Russia joins a long tradition of authoritarian states that preserve the form of democracy while hollowing out its substance, using the language of foreign threat to explain away the