Yes, Russia still has elections. They're even mostly fair; irregularities tend to be more along the lines of disproportionate media access for preferred candidates and strict candidate registration requirements that inhibit competitors than actual ballot-stuffing. That's one of the most depressing things about his present foreign policies; Putin, and to a slightly lesser degree his party as a whole, really does have a popular mandate in the eyes of people who view him as giving them their pride back and, for those who haven't forgotten Yeltsin and the 1990s, putting food on their plates and "putting the oligarchs in their place". Domestically, his foreign adventurism is a selling point, not a weakness.
Yes, Russia still has elections. They're even mostly fair; irregularities tend to be more along the lines of disproportionate media access for preferred candidates and strict candidate registration requirements that inhibit competitors than actual ballot-stuffing. That's one of the most depressing things about his present foreign policies; Putin, and to a slightly lesser degree his party as a whole, really does have a popular mandate in the eyes of people who view him as giving them their pride back and, for those who haven't forgotten Yeltsin and the 1990s, putting food on their plates and "putting the oligarchs in their place". Domestically, his foreign adventurism is a selling point, not a weakness.
Yeah, that's why they call Russia a managed democracy rather than a dictatorship. The elections are relatively clean (outside of some smaller republics like Tchetchenia), but the political process is carefully managed to make anything but a government victory all but impossible. Media is carefully controlled, fake opposition parties are created to split the vote (Like the Rodina block) and prominent opposition figures that could pose a risk drops dead from time to time, leaving a ineffective squabbling mess in their place.
Of the four parties currently in the Duma, you have Putin's United Russia, the far-right LDPR (Generally supportive of the executive), a Just Russia (Made from the former puppet party Rodina block and a bunch of other party, although it does vote against Putin sometimes) and the former Communists.
Edit: Re-reading about a Just Russia's formation, I find the similarities with the way the Soviets forced all leftists parties into Communist-dominated fronts in the occupied countries of Eastern Europe striking.
P.S. To be clear, all these shenanigans don't dispute the fact that UR does have popular support, as I said, it's not a dictatorship, it's a managed democracy.