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		</div><p>The main Kremlin party has retained its dominance in regional elections but the opposition made gains in some areas in a challenge to Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to early official results released on Monday.</p>
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<p>Voters in dozens of Russian regions cast ballots on Sunday to elect regional governors, members of provincial legislatures and city councils.</p>
<p>The votes come weeks after the Kremlin’s most prominent critic, Alexei Navalny, was poisoned with Soviet-era nerve agent Novichok.</p>
<figure id="attachment_161996" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-161996" style="width: 600px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img src="https://londonglossy.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/AB4F1C49-BED9-4B52-86BA-9419662C59AB.jpeg" alt="" width="600" height="400" class="size-full wp-image-161996" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-161996" class="wp-caption-text">Many of Alexei Navalny’s supporters have pushed a ‘smart voting’ strategy</figcaption></figure>
<p>Sunday’s vote was an important test for his supporters, who were campaigning to win seats in several regional legislatures.<br />
In the city of Novosibirsk, which Mr Navalny visited days before falling ill on August 20, the head of his regional headquarters, Sergei Boiko, won a seat in the city council.</p>
<p>The main Kremlin party, United Russia, which Mr Navalny has contemptuously dubbed a “party of crooks and thieves”, lost its majority on Novosibirsk’s city council, according to the preliminary returns.<br />
In Tomsk, the Siberian city Mr Navalny departed from when he collapsed on the plane to Moscow, his representative Ksenia Fadeyeva also secured a city council seat.</p>
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<p>She thanked voters for their support, tweeting “it was important to win after what happened”.<br />
“Navalny was poisoned in Tomsk, and this is the best counter-blow from our headquarters,” associate Ivan Zhdanov said on Twitter.</p>
<p>In many regional races, Mr Navalny’s supporters have pushed a “smart voting” strategy, urging voters to support the candidates who have the best chance of defeating those who run on United Russia tickets, irrespective of their political affiliation.</p>
<p>That approach seemed to work in some of the races, with candidates for the Communist Party, socialist-oriented Just Russia and the nationalist Liberal Democratic Party posting gains in several regions.</p>
<figure id="attachment_161999" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-161999" style="width: 600px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img src="https://londonglossy.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/80D6BA6E-E653-4D49-8FE0-C749E2E1E5DD.jpeg" alt="" width="600" height="421" class="size-full wp-image-161999" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-161999" class="wp-caption-text">Russian President Vladimir Putin</figcaption></figure>
<p>The regional elections were a key test for the Kremlin after the July 1 constitutional vote that could allow Mr Putin to stay in power until 2036.<br />
His popularity reached a peak after Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea but dwindled steadily in the following years under the impact of economic woes and the government’s unpopular decision to raise the retirement age.</p>
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<p>Plummeting incomes and rising unemployment during the coronavirus outbreak further dented his approval ratings.<br />
In a challenge to the Kremlin, residents of the city of Khabarovsk on the border with China have staged regular rallies for two months to protest the arrest of the local governor.</p>
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