The Council of the European Union has taken offense to Russia’s ruling party receiving a big vote of support in the nationwide legislative election. Their statement condemned Russia for allowing four former Ukrainian oblasts—Lugansk, Donetsk, Zaporozhye and Kherson—to vote. (The EU had also objected in 2022 to those residents voting to join the Russian Federation.) The EU’s statement labelled the election as a violation of international law, and announced their plan to impose sanctions on those who helped to organize the election, along with those who actually ran for office.

The EU failed to address the embarrassing situation whereby Ukraine has cancelled all elections, supposedly due to the inability to hold one due to the ongoing fighting, whereas Russia was able to carry out a regularly scheduled election in four of their regions that Ukraine is firing upon. There were also accusations in some Western media that Russian authorities failed to properly warn Moscovites of Ukrainian drone attacks during Sunday’s voting. RBC Ukraine’s version read: “During the massive drone attack on Moscow on September 20, residents of the Russian capital received no warnings about the threat through either sirens or SMS alerts. Analysts linked this to the Russian authorities’ reluctance to reduce turnout in the State Duma elections.” Such accusations carry with them the obvious implication that the heavy drone attack on Moscow on Sunday had an objective of suppressing the voter turnout.