Russia's election winner is all but decided. But this vote still matters to Putin

It is an election where the result is known before the ballots are counted.

Three days of voting in Russia's parliamentary elections started on Friday,

The United Russia party — fiercely loyal to the country's president, Vladimir Putin — will again be the big winner.

But that doesn't mean the vote to determine who sits in the Russian parliament, known as the Duma, isn't important to the president.

It is, because it's the first since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The conflict has since killed hundreds of thousands of people.

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Putin has ruled Russia since 1999 and his United Russia party has dominated Russian politics since the early 2000s.

Criticism of the war on Ukraine is banned in Russia, and only parties that support Putin and the Kremlin's dragging military campaign have been registered to run. Russia has also organised voting in occupied Ukraine.

Nikolai Petrov is a Russian political analyst and served as an adviser to the Kremlin in the early 1990s.

"Not so much are these elections about composition of the state Duma, it’s more or less predefined," he said.

"It’s about keeping the image that society is consolidated around the Kremlin."

Voting is taking place in Crimea, annexed by Russia in 2014, as well as Russian-controlled parts of Ukraine's Donbas, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions in another attempt to try and legitimise the occupation.

In Russia itself, Ukraine's strikes on oil and gas facilities, as well as online retailers' warehouses , have brought the conflict home.

The economy is under increasing strain, and discontent is quietly rising. But there are few options for voters seeking change.