Partij Poetin wint met gemak de parlementsverkiezingen (en)
The United Russia party, backed by president Vladimir Putin, won a landslide victory in Sunday's parliamentary elections.
With over 80 percent of votes counted, United Russia won 63 percent - a result that will probably translate into a constitutional majority in the Russian parliament.
Three more parties seem to have passed the seven-percent threshold to enter the Duma - the opposition Communists with eleven percent of votes and two pro-Kremlin parties, the Liberal Democratic Party (8.8 percent) and A Just Russia (8.4 percent).
60 percent of the country's 108 million registered voters came to cast their ballot, an increase compared to the previous elections in 2003.
But the opposition parties, including the communists, described the poll as heavily manipulated. They are considering three-day protests as well as a legal challenge of the elections.
"We do not trust these figures announced by the central elections commission and we will conduct a parallel count", the communist party leader Gennady Zyuganov was cited as saying by the BBC.
Nikita Belykh from the Union of Right Forces, a democratic opposition party, described the elections as the "most dishonest in 20 years".
According to the BBC, the independent Russian monitoring group Golos reported a series of irregularities such as entering those voting for United Russia into a prize lottery.
The US called on Moscow to "investigate" all irregularities, with the White House spokesperson Gordon Johndroe also critically pointing to "the use of state administrative resources in support of United Russia, the bias of the state-owned or influenced media in favour of United Russia, intimidation of political opposition, and the lack of equal opportunity encountered by opposition candidates and parties".
International monitors were not present in Russia, as the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe had to cancel its plans to observe the parliamentary elections, citing "unprecedented restrictions" such as limits on number of observers or visa delays.
Only a small group of MPs from the OSCE's parliamentary assembly attended the election.
Now, the main question is how Mr Putin will use Sunday's results - widely seen as popularity test for him - for his future career, after his second presidential term expires next year.
The constitution currently bars him from seeking a third presidential term, but in the run up to Sunday's elections, he raised the possibility of running for the position of a future prime minister.
According to some analysts, if predictions are right, the move would strengthen the prime minister role at the expense of the presidential office, allowing Mr Putin to remain the central player in the country's political scene.