MOSCOW, September 13. /TASS/. Members of Russia’s Central Election Commission (CEC) will hold a meeting on Wednesday to sum up the final results of elections, held in Russian regions over the past weekend.

More than 80 Russian constituent entities held elections of various levels - from gubernatorial to municipal - over the past weekend. For the first time, parliamentary elections were held in the people’s republics of Donetsk and Lugansk (DPR and LPR), as well as in the regions of Kherson and Zaporozhye.

Overall, more than 4,000 elections took place across Russia on September 8, 9 and 10. A total of 21 regions held direct elections of regional heads, while 20 voted for regional lawmakers. Members of municipal legislatures were elected in 17 regions. Some 81,000 people participated in the elections as candidates for various posts.

Central Election Commission (CEC) Chairwoman Ella Pamfilova said on September 11 that over 45 million people out of 67 million eligible voters took part. The voter turnout averaged 43.5%, the highest since 2017.

Hard-won and historic elections

Russia’s four new regions were among the areas that showed the highest turnout. The figure exceeded 76% in the Donetsk People’s Republic, 72.5% in the Lugansk People’s Republic, and over 66% and 65, respectively, in the Zaporozhye and Kherson Regions. In many aspects, this high turnout was due to the fact that the vote new regions began on August 31, giving residents of hard-to-reach areas and zones close to the frontline an opportunity to cast their ballot until September 7. On September 1-4, vote was held at exterritorial polling stations in 81 Russian regions.

Central Election Commission (CEC) Chairwoman Ella Pamfilova said the elections were "hard-won" by the residents of those areas, and described the event itself as ‘historic.’

Kiev troops staged several attacks on voters and polling stations over this period. On September 7, members of a regional election commission were injured in the shelling of the DPR city of Volnovakha. The election commission of the Kherson Region had to evacuate several times due to rocket attacks.

In the early hours of September 9, Ukrainian drones destroyed a polling station in the Zaporozhye Region, but no injuries were reported. Pamfilova described this incident as a terror attack. The Russian Investigative Committee has opened a criminal case in connection with the incident.

The elections in Russia’s new regions were attended by over 40 international observers, including from the United States, Argentina, Indonesia, Italy, Brazil, India, Iceland and Spain. They reported no violations.