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MOSCOW—Candidates backed by Russia’s opposition won nearly half the seats up for grabs in Moscow’s city elections Sunday, building on a wave of protests this summer that exposed some of the frailties in President Vladimir Putin ’s closely controlled political machine, but failed to make significant inroads in local races elsewhere in the country.
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Although antigovernment candidates fell short of taking control of the city Duma, the results suggest opposition leader Alexei Navalny had succeeded in building a coherent threat to the establishment United Russia party, at least in the capital. Opposition-backed candidates won 20 of the 45 seats in the city Duma, and many of the pro-government candidates ran as independents in an effort to disguise their ties to United Russia.
“The results are a big success for the Moscow opposition,” said Abbas Gallyamov, a political consultant based in Moscow and former speech writer for Mr. Putin. “It’s an expression of growing political discontent and self-determination of Muscovites.”
The Kremlin, however, retained most of its seats in other key cities that voted for governors and local parliaments, showing how the opposition movement hasn’t so far gained a significant foothold outside of the capital. In St. Petersburg, Russia’s second city and Mr. Putin’s hometown, acting Governor Alexander Beglov, an ally of the president, won easily. Incumbents backed by United Russia, or closely aligned with the party, won all 16 gubernatorial races.
“In some places there are more seats, in other places there are fewer seats. But across the whole country the party showed its political leadership,” Dmitry Peskov, Mr. Putin’s press secretary, said Monday.
Sunday’s vote came after a tumultuous summer that saw a series of street protests snowball to become the largest outpouring of discontent in nearly a decade. They were triggered by election authorities’ decision to exclude leading opposition figures from the city elections, but morphed into a broader protest movement providing Russians a platform to air grievances over political freedoms and falling incomes. The protests came two years before national elections and in advance of the end of Mr. Putin’s own six-year term in 2024, and at their peak drew as many as 50,000 people.
The Russian government shrugged off the protests in public, suggesting they speak to the country’s democratic credentials. Mr. Putin, whose approval ratings are at their lowest in years, said during an investment forum in Vladivostok Thursday that sometimes protests can get results by shaking up power, but that “things should be done within the framework of the law.”
Moscow authorities, however, responded to the demonstrations by deploying armed riot police and filing legal cases against more than a dozen opposition leaders. Some 2,500 people were briefly detained and five people so far have been convicted and sentenced to prison on charges relating to the arrests.
As the city elections approached, Mr. Navalny adopted a system he called “Smart Voting”, launching a website and app to help voters identify candidates most likely to defeat those supported by United Russia. In some instances this meant supporting candidates closely aligned to the Kremlin, including the Russian Communist Party. Political analysts said this took the sheen off the victory.
“Navalny can say that his ‘Smart Voting’ was successful, but we can’t measure his influence,” said Andrei Kolesnikov, senior fellow at the Carnegie Moscow Center. “Yes, there was the protest voting for Communists primarily, but at the end of the day it’s rather like voting ‘for Motherland, for Stalin’.”
On Sunday, Russia’s communications watchdog Roskomnadzor accused Facebook Inc. and Alphabet Inc. ’s Google of interfering in the elections, alleging that their sites had circulated political advertising during the campaign.
“These actions can be considered interference in the sovereign affairs of Russia,” the watchdog said in a statement. Russian officials had previously accused Western countries of fomenting the recent wave of protests in Moscow.
“We support responsible political advertising, and expect all political ads and destinations to comply with local legal requirements, including campaign and election laws and mandated election ‘silence periods,’ for any geographic areas they target,” Google said in a statement Monday.
Facebook said in a statement that advertisers, and not the company itself, were responsible for complying with local election laws. “If we receive notification that an ad violates local country laws, we will review and take appropriate action,” it said.
Write to Georgi Kantchev at georgi.kantchev@wsj.com
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