United Russia in the context of "Alexander Borodai"

Vladimir Vasilyevich Saldo (Russian: Владимир Васильевич Сальдо, Ukrainian: Володимир Васильович Сальдо, romanized: Volodymyr Vasylovych Saldo; born 12 June 1956) is a Ukrainian and Russian politician serving as the acting collaborationist governor of the annexed Kherson Oblast since 4 October 2022. A member of the ruling United Russia, he previously served as the head of the Russian-installed Kherson military-civilian administration from 26 April to 4 October 2022.

Prior to the invasion, Saldo served three terms as mayor of Kherson from 2002 to 2012, and later as a People's Deputy in the Verkhovna Rada from 2012 to 2014, representing the pro-Russian Party of Regions.

Presidential elections were held in Russia on 4 March 2012. There were five officially registered candidates: four representatives of registered parties, and one nominal independent. The election was the first one held after constitutional amendments were introduced in 2008, in which the elected president for the first time would serve a six-year term, rather than a four-year term.

At the congress of the ruling United Russia party in Moscow on 24 September 2011, the incumbent president Dmitry Medvedev proposed that his predecessor, Vladimir Putin, stand for the presidency in 2012, an offer which Putin accepted. Putin immediately offered Medvedev the opportunity to stand on the United Russia ticket in the parliamentary elections in December 2011 and become prime minister at the end of his presidential term. All independents had to register by 15 December 2011, and candidates nominated by parties were required to register by 18 January 2012. The final list was announced on 29 January. On 2 March, outgoing president Medvedev addressed the nation on the national television channels about the upcoming elections, inviting citizens to vote.

The 2011–2013 Russian protests, which some English language media referred to as the Snow Revolution (Russian: Снежная революция, romanized: Snezhnaya revolyutsiya), began in 2011 (as protests against the 2011 Russian legislative election results) and continued into 2012 and 2013. The protests were motivated by claims of Russian and foreign journalists, political activists and members of the public that the election process was fraudulent. The Central Election Commission of Russia stated that 195 out of 1,686 official reports of fraud (11.5%) could be confirmed as true.

On 10 December 2011, after a week of small-scale demonstrations, Russia saw some of the biggest protests in Moscow since the 1990s. The focus of the protests were the ruling party, United Russia, and its leader Vladimir Putin, the prime minister and former president, who announced his intention to run for president again in 2012. Another round of large protests took place on 24 December 2011. These protests were named "For Fair Elections" (Russian: За честные выборы) and their organizers set up the movement of the same name. By this time, the "For Fair Elections" protesters had coalesced around five main points: freedom for political prisoners; annulment of the election results; the resignation of Vladimir Churov (head of the election commission) and the opening of an official investigation into vote fraud; registration of opposition parties and new democratic legislation on parties and elections; as well as new democratic and open elections.

Presidential elections were held in Russia on 18 March 2018. Incumbent president Vladimir Putin was eligible to run. He declared his intent to do so on 6 December 2017 and was expected to win. This came following several months of speculation throughout the second half of 2017 as Putin made evasive comments, including that he had still not decided whether he would like to "step down" from the post of president, that he would "think about running", and that he "hadn't yet decided whether to run for another term". Different sources predicted that he would run as an independent to capitalize more support from the population, and although he could also have been nominated by the United Russia party as in 2012, Putin chose to run as an independent. Among registered voters in Russia, 67% voted in the election.

There were allegations of widespread electoral fraud, including ballot box stuffing, forced voting, and threats against election observers. A video widely shared online showed people stuffing papers into ballot boxes. In addition, critics of Putin were barred from running.

The Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF; Russian: Коммунистическая партия Российской Федерации, КПРФ, romanized: Kommunisticheskaya partiya Rossiyskoy Federatsii, KPRF) is a communist political party in Russia that officially adheres to Marxist–Leninist philosophy. It is the second-largest political party in Russia after United Russia. The youth organisation of the party is the Leninist Young Communist League.

The CPRF can trace its origin to the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) which was established in March 1898. The party split in 1903 into a Menshevik (minority) and Bolshevik (majority) faction; the latter, led by Vladimir Lenin, is the direct ancestor of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) and is the party that seized power in the October Revolution of 1917. After the CPSU was banned in 1991 by Russian president Boris Yeltsin in the aftermath of a failed coup attempt, the CPRF was founded at the Second Extraordinary Congress of Russian Communists on 14 February 1993 as the successor organisation of the Communist Party of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (CPRSFSR). It was the ruling party in the State Duma, the lower house of the Russian Federal Assembly from 1998 to 1999.

Since 1999, Vladimir Putin has continuously served as either president (acting president from 1999 to 2000; two terms 2000–2008, three terms 2012–present) or Prime Minister of Russia (three months in 1999, full term 2008–2012). Putin has been described as the de facto leader of Russia since 2000.

During his presidency, he has been a member of the Unity party and the United Russia party. He is also affiliated with the People's Front, a group of supporters that Putin organized in 2011 to help improve the public's perception of United Russia. His political ideology, priorities and policies are sometimes referred to as Putinism.