„Elections to Russia’s State Duma: Do Elections Without an Opposition Matter?“

European Contexts Online Background Conversation 
With Nikolai Petrov, a prominent Russian political scientist and geographer specializing in Russian domestic politics. He is Head of Analysis of Transformation Processes at the New Eurasian Strategies Centre (NEST Centre) and a consulting fellow at Chatham House, London.

Please register HERE.

Background 
The Russian Federation will hold elections to the State Duma, its lower house of parliament, from 18 to 20 September 2026. These will be the first national parliamentary elections since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
The outcome of the elections is not in doubt. President Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party is expected to win. Opposition politicians are either in exile or barred from participating, and anti-war parties are not contesting the elections.
Do these elections matter?

Speaker 
Nikolai Petrov is a political expert specializing in Russian domestic politics whose 40-year career has spanned academic research, politics, and business.
At the NEST Centre, he leads work on Russian domestic politics, including research on political elites and decision-making processes.
Before joining the NEST Centre, he was a visiting researcher at Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (SWP) in Berlin, where he focused on Russian domestic politics, its impact on foreign policy, and the workings of Russia’s political regime. He is also a consulting fellow with the Russia and Eurasia Programme at Chatham House in London, where he previously served as a senior research fellow from 2019 to 2022.
From 2013 to 2021, Petrov was a professor and Head of the Laboratory for Regional Development Assessment Methods at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow.
Full CV

Selected Recent publications
The transformation of Putin’s regime, https://nestcentre.org/transit…
Cracks in the Kremlin walls: Threats to the stability of the Putin regime,https://nestcentre.org/cracks-…
War inside Russia: Repression as a pillar of the Putin regime,https://nestcentre.org/war-ins…

Moderator 
Mirjana Tomic, fjum / Presseclub Concordia

Format 
Moderated conversation followed by a live Q&A.