United Russia primaries will be held for the first time with preferences for SBO participants

United Russia (UR) this week begins nominating participants in the preliminary voting to determine its candidates for the September regional elections. The main innovation of the current procedure is additional preferences for participants in a special military operation (SVO). For example, the result they received in the primaries will automatically increase by 25%, which gives them a noticeable advantage over their competitors. However, Kommersant’s sources and experts indicate that it is too early to talk about a large-scale influx of combatants into the United Russia deputy corps. Firstly, not all of them can participate in elections, since the SVO is ongoing, and, secondly, in order to become successful politicians, they will need serious training.

On March 26, the process of nominating candidates to participate in the preliminary vote of the United Russia begins for the autumn elections to regional parliaments and local governments. And on March 25, applications for primaries for by-elections to the State Duma in a single-mandate constituency in Khakassia began. Let us remember that this mandate became vacant after United Russia member Sergei Sokol resigned as a Duma deputy last fall for the post of Speaker of the Khakassian Parliament.

This year, United Russia introduced a number of innovations in the primaries, the key of which relate to the participants of the SBO. As Sergei Perminov, deputy secretary of the party’s general council, explained to Kommersant, such Russians, when nominated for a preliminary vote, will have to present an appropriate document confirming their status. At the same time, those SBO participants who do not want to take advantage of the preferences provided can participate in the primaries as ordinary citizens.

SBO participants who have indicated their status will be exempt from the obligation to provide the originals of all submitted documents if they have previously sent them electronically. The decision to remove them from voting can be made by the organizing committee only in agreement with a higher party authority. In addition, CBO participants will be exempt from the mandatory requirement for other applicants to post at least two units of video content.

The most important preference for combatants concerns the summing up of the primaries: 25% of the result will be added to the number of votes they received.

The party is counting on those SVO members who have already retired from service or whose contract is ending in the near future. “For example, someone already knows that by September his contract will expire, and he decides to change his military career to serving the country in representative government bodies,” explains Mr. Perminov.

Kommersant’s interlocutors in United Russia and sources close to the presidential administration say that this idea was born in the depths of the party itself shortly after the president delivered a message to the Federal Assembly on February 29. Let us recall that then Vladimir Putin said that the participants of the SVO are people who “can be entrusted with Russia in the future”, and announced for them a special personnel program “Time of Heroes”, which will work according to the same standards as the “School of Governors” “and the personnel competition “Leaders of Russia”. According to one of Kommersant’s interlocutors, the idea was also approved by the presidential administration, since with his message the president set a trend towards increasing the representation of SVO participants in political institutions. As one of Kommersant’s sources close to the presidential administration notes, in private conversations, representatives of the United Russia leadership say that they really aim to seriously renew their ranks at the expense of combatants.

However, other Kommersant interlocutors are more skeptical about the scale of the process that has begun. Thus, one of the party representatives says that United Russia will look for “stars” among the SVO participants, train them and accompany them, but “no one will lead them by the hand to heaven.” Moreover, not all participants in hostilities can so easily change their current activities to political ones.

Let us note that United Russia announced its intention to help SVO participants become deputies last year by organizing special training for them.

According to Kommersant’s information, as a result of the 2023 regional campaign, 97 SBO participants were elected from United Russia to regional and municipal representative bodies.

Most of them were in the Lugansk (27) and Donetsk (16) people’s republics, as well as in the Altai Territory (10). In all other regions, the number of SBO participants among newly elected deputies, as a rule, ranged from one to three people.

Electoral lawyer Oleg Zakharov explains to Kommersant that there is no direct ban on participation in elections, let alone in primaries, neither for contract soldiers nor for mobilized ones, but in reality the latter will most likely face a number of restrictions. “It is unlikely that there will be a large number of such cases, because to participate in elections you need to personally submit documents to the election commission at the place of voting, and those who are mobilized are associated with their place of service and cannot leave there,” the expert emphasizes, stipulating that contract soldiers have the opportunity to leave at all times. there is, both within the framework of the contract itself and at its end. In addition, members of the SVO who have had problems with the law in the past can hardly count on a political career, because the absence of a criminal record is a mandatory condition for participation in the primaries, Mr. Zakharov reminds: “And a conviction for some crimes blocks participation in elections for several years even after its withdrawal and repayment, and in this part the electoral legislation does not contain any exemptions for SVO participants.” The lawyer’s conclusions, in fact, are confirmed by Kommersant’s source in United Russia: according to him, if the party wants to attract active military personnel into its ranks, it will have to deal with the Ministry of Defense.

The head of the Civil Society Development Foundation, Konstantin Kostin, believes that United Russia, with its decision, “opened the door as wide as possible” for the participants of the SVO. But this does not mean that they are perceived a priori by society as ready-made politicians, the expert points out: “For representatives of this group to win elections, become successful deputies, and gain the trust of citizens, it is important to have certain skills and experience.” Therefore, it is important that the party provides the necessary training for SVO participants, and based on the results of these processes, it will be possible to judge the final results of this and other similar decisions, says Mr. Kostin. “The result, that is, how many members of the SBO will actually become successful representatives of the deputy corps, whether they will form a new political generation, will be visible in three to four years,” the political scientist suggests.

Andrey Vinokurov