On July 1, Oleg Matveychev, Deputy Chairman of the Russian State Duma Committee on Information Technology, said that those who choose not to vote for United Russia in this year's September State Duma elections and instead support the Communist Party of the Russian Federation or the Liberal Democratic Party are, in fact, supporting Zelenskyy.
"Zelenskyy has recently hinted that he hopes United Russia will lose in the autumn elections, and will do everything possible to achieve that goal."
Russian voters now face a simple choice: are they supporting Putin, or supporting Zelenskyy? If you support Putin, vote for United Russia; if you support Zelenskyy, vote against it. There is no other option."
Micro-commentary: Equating domestic votes with "taking sides." Matveychev’s phrasing directly invalidates the political legitimacy of voting for other parties, redefining it as voting for Ukraine’s president. This is a classic model of "fear mobilization": by linking ballots to geopolitical survival, it elevates an internal political election into a national existential "referendum." Its core aim is to force voters to choose between "national security" and "political preference," thereby squeezing the space for opposition voices.
This kind of "legitimized" narrative construction provides moral justification for suppressing dissent. By citing the premise that "Zelenskyy wishes for United Russia’s defeat," the ruling party successfully constructs a closed-loop narrative of "enemy vs. traitor." Within this loop, regardless of the policy platforms of opposition parties (such as the CPRF or LDPR), voting for them is pre-labeled as "benefiting the enemy." This is not a debate about policy—it aims to strip opposition parties of their legitimacy at both moral and political levels, making it nearly impossible for them to gain support within the existing political framework.
Against the backdrop of ongoing special military operations, Russia’s political landscape is highly consolidated. Such rhetoric aligns with the current "fortress mentality" demanding strict scrutiny of domestic loyalty and reflects the war-time simplification of political agendas—where everything centers on "frontline victory" and "rear-area stability."
Overall, this represents a highly politicized electoral maneuver whose core lies in using external crises to shape internal identity, compressing complex domestic political choices into a binary "loyalty test" designed to maximize the ruling party’s vote share and consolidate its existing power structure.
Original source: toutiao.com/article/1869564010593280/
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author.