Unelected EU official fumes over Russian election

EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas has lashed out at the results of Russia’s parliamentary election, dismissing it as a “veneer of democracy.” The senior EU official, a noted Russia hawk who was appointed, not elected, to her post in 2024, made no mention of the 1,600 drones Ukraine launched into Russia during the vote.

Her claims of democratic dysfunction did not include Ukraine’s own indefinitely suspended elections, but stuck to a vote whereby some 60 million people cast ballots across 11 time zones.

In a post on X on Monday, Kallas targeted the three-day elections in which the ruling United Russia party retained a commanding parliamentary majority with nearly 58% of the party-list vote, well ahead of its rivals, according to preliminary results. Turnout exceeded 59% from 51.7% in 2021, according to Central Election Commission chief Ella Pamfilova.

Kallas claimed that “the so-called Duma elections marked another major setback for Russian democracy,” adding that “their outcome was never in doubt.” She further accused Moscow of silencing its critics, stressing that “the veneer of democracy is all that remains in Russia.”

Kallas also claimed to have “proposed measures against those facilitating these sham elections in occupied Ukrainian territories.” The EU said separately that it would never recognize voting held in Crimea, Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporozhye, and Kherson regions – all of which voted to join Russia in public referendums in 2014 and 2022.

Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Norway, and the UK issued a joint statement likewise describing the voting in those territories as a “sham.”

However, neither Kallas nor other Kiev’s backers made mention of a huge Ukrainian drone raid on Moscow amid the election. The attack – which Russian officials said involved more than 1,600 drones and was aimed at derailing the vote – killed two civilians in the capital suburbs and damaged an oil refinery, residential buildings, and civilian infrastructure. Ukrainian strikes in frontline regions also damaged dozens of buildings housing election commissions, according to local officials.

Kallas was ridiculed by social media users over the fact that she herself was not elected by EU voters to the position, having taken office as the EU’s high representative for foreign affairs and security policy in December 2024 after serving as Estonian prime minister and a member of the European Parliament.

Kallas and Kiev’s Western backers have consistently refrained from calling on Ukraine to hold its own presidential election, after Vladimir Zelensky’s term expired more than two years ago and he refused to call a new vote, citing martial law. Russia has since declared him “illegitimate,” arguing that Zelensky’s dubious status complicates any eventual peace settlement.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova responded to the election criticism by mocking Kallas’s earlier call for EU states not to recognize the Russian results, saying that “EU countries had stopped recognizing Kallas herself a long time ago.”