Participants of the special operation register to participate in the United Russia primaries

More and more applications to the regional organizing committees of the United Russia primaries for the selection of candidates for regional elections come from servicemen who are in the zone of the special military operation (SVO), Secretary of the General Council of the party Andrey Turchak said the day before. “The guys who are today in the NVO zone and perform combat missions want to become candidates and represent United Russia in the elections in the fall. Some of them are already MPs and are planning to run for a new term. But there are more of those who go into politics for the first time,” he wrote in his Telegram channel.

According to Turchak, a completely remote format for submitting documents is provided for such participants. It will be enough for a serviceman to submit an application in electronic form, and “then all the necessary points will be screwed up by the organizing committees on an individual basis,” said United Russia. He added that about 100 participants in the primaries in the regions are military personnel who returned home after participating in a special operation or volunteers participating in the humanitarian mission of United Russia. The application period will last until April 27.

Among these 100 participants, approximately 40% are military personnel, most of whom have already returned from the front line, Sergey Perminov, deputy secretary of the United Russia General Council, told Vedomosti. The rest, he said, are volunteers “in the broadest sense of the word, who participated in a humanitarian mission from the party in new territories.” Participants in the primaries from the special operation zone have the opportunity to campaign online, since they have access to the Internet, says Perminov: “A similar situation was during the pandemic, when campaigning in the preliminary voting was also conducted online.” In addition, there are volunteers who are ready to help them run the campaign, including technologists who are participating in the Politstart party project this year, he adds. Another interlocutor in the party says that United Russia also plans to ensure the right to campaign and vote, including in military units in the new territories, where there are military personnel who have expressed a desire to participate in the primaries.

Political scientist Rostislav Turovsky believes that “military personnel will be limited in their ability to conduct a public campaign by objective circumstances.” “But I think that those of them who will actually be promoted to deputies will be allowed to hold meetings with voters on the territory, although not so frequent. Another thing is more important: their images and statements can be easily promoted in social networks, the media and outdoor campaigning,” he said. Turovsky predicts “experiments with online formats with a connection from the special operation zone,” and political scientists, in his opinion, can work with such candidates remotely. “Therefore, I don’t see a big problem with the campaign, it will just be original and creative in its own way,” Turovsky said.

Political analyst Evgeny Minchenko also sees no problems with campaigning due to the remoteness of candidates from the venue of the primaries: “Firstly, a lot is done online, and secondly, there is a campaign network.” “Moreover, the voting itself is carried out electronically, so everything can be done quite easily via the Internet,” he told Vedomosti.