Popular opinion in Russia supports the war in Chechnya

December 16, 1999
Web posted at: 1:48 p.m. EST (1848 GMT)

From staff and wire reports.

MOSCOW (CNN) -- Russia's war in Chechnya gets its first electoral test on Sunday when the country's 100 million voters go to the polls to pick a new parliament in a warm up for next year's presidential election.

With public support of the military campaign against Chechen militants high, President Boris Yeltsin's government appears to be in a good position to increase its parliamentary support.

Half of the 450 seats of the lower house of the Duma will be chosen from party lists, and the other half from individual constituencies -- and very few have been critical of the Chechnya campaign.

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A major political benefactor of the conflict has been the newly formed Unity Party, headed by Emergency Situations Minister Sergei Shoigu, who has paid regular visits to the war zone. The staunchly pro-government Unity also has the backing of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who wields considerable political and public influence.

Unity is expected to pull down between 16 and 21 percent of the Duma's seats, giving Yeltsin a significant platform of support in a parliament that in recent years -- led by virulently anti-Yeltsin Communists -- has consistently opposed him.

Lastest polls indicate the Communists are front-runners, but by only a small margin. They are expected to receive between 17 and 24 percent support, and although they remain an influential political force, this projected backing is a sharp reduction from the nearly 35 percent the party polled in 1995.

Shoigu has made many trips to the war zone

Several other parties are expected to make the 5 percent cutoff to win seats from party lists. Those include the centrist Fatherland-All Russia movement, the liberal Yabloko party, the pro-Western, technocratic Union of Right-Wing Forces, and Vladimir Zhirinovsky's ultra-nationalist bloc.

In all, 28 parties and hundreds of individual candidates are registered for the election.

The Fatherland-All Russia movement, formed earlier this year under Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, may be the most disappointed among the parties. Luzhkov pledged to bring down the Yeltsin administration, but the party's opposition to the government has been diluted by its political need to support the popular Chechen war.

Next year's presidential vote will select a replacement for Yeltsin, who is prohibited by law from seeking a third term.

Correspondent Mike Hanna and Reuters contributed to this report.

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