The New Nation - Internet Edition

AFP, Moscow

Final preparations were underway in Russia on Saturday for parliamentary elections expected to hand a sweeping victory to President Vladimir Putin's party, just three months before presidential polls.

From Kamchatka to Kaliningrad, some 109 million voters are eligible to cast ballots on Sunday in Russia's fifth parliamentary elections since the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union. Putin is standing as the lead candidate of the United Russia party and has said that a convincing victory would give him a mandate to continue playing a role in politics after he steps down in March of next year. A former KGB officer in power since 2000, Putin has cast the elections as a referendum on his rule, saying that a vote for United Russia would safeguard the country's oil-driven economic boom and stability. "The result of the parliamentary elections will, without a doubt, set the tone for the elections for a new president," Putin said in a televised address on Thursday that was aired again on Friday. In his final pitch to voters, Putin urged them to turn out at the polls and vote for United Russia, warning that a vote for his opponents could return the country to the "humiliation, dependency and disintegration" of the early post-Soviet years.