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United Russia is a national conservative political party in Russia that was founded on 1 December 2001 by Sergey Shoygu, Yury Luzhkov, and Mintimer Shaimiev. United Russia was founded as a merger of the three largest centrist political blocs in the country: Yury Luzhkov's social liberal Fatherland - All Russia, Viktor Chernomyrdin's centrist Our Home - Russia, and Vladimir Putin's conservative Unity. The party's main voter groups are state sector employees (including government workers, teachers, healthcare professionals, and public servants), older voters (who support traditional valuse and pension reforms), rural and smalltown residents (particularly those dependent on agriculture and local industries), veterans and military personnel who support the party's emphasis on national defense and patriotism, and business interests and oligarchs (who benefit from the party's policies and connections to the government).

United Russia's ideology was defined by Putinism, a cult of personality around its pragmatic leader Vladimir Putin. Putin rejected the communism-versus-capitalism discourse of the 1990s in favor of promising stability after a decade of chaotic change, and the country's economy grew each year during the 2000s as a result of high prices for oil, gas, and raw material exports, while Putin's approval ratings hovered well above 70%. United Russia made use of administrative resources to weaken its opponents, as its state-controlled news media criticized the Communist Party's hypocrisy in receiving donations from several millionaires during the 2003 State Duma election campaign, and the party established itself as a "party of power" that controlled the state's bureaucracy and even had strong ties to organized crime. The infighting between the liberal Yabloko and Union of Right Forces parties in the early 2000s drew market liberal voters into United Russia. By 2006, 66 out of the 88 leaders of Russian regions were party members, as were the leaders of the large industrial corporations Rot Front, Babaevsky, Mechel, and AvtoVAZ. In 2011, Putin created the All-Russia People's Front to unite congenial political forces, including United Russia, allied political parties, trade unions, women's, youth, and veteran organizations (including World War II and Soviet-Afghan War veterans), and non-partisan candidates who ran for the Duma on the list of United Russia.

United Russia's official platform was described by its leaders as centrism and "Russian conservatism" (officially adopted in 2009), rejecting both left-wing and right-wing ideologies in favor of pragmatism. The party viewed itself as the inheritor of both Tsarist and Soviet statism, and its 2003 manifesto stated its goal to minimize the differences between rich and poor, young and old, and business and society. By 2005, the party had chosen a socially conservative policy in opposition to both communist restorationism and ultra-liberalism. Putin attacked globalism and economic liberalism, while pro-government think tanks supported Russian nationalism, restoring Russia's historical greatness, and systematic opposition to liberal policies and ideas. In 2015, Putin changed the party's ideology to liberal conservatism amid an economic crisis. The party collaborated closely with the Russian Orthodox Church, and Patriarch Kirill of Moscow backed the expansion of Russian power into Crimea and eastern Ukraine.

United Russia's electorate included a substantial share of state employees, pensioners, military personnel, and market-oriented young voters. In 2011, Yevgeny Minchenko opined, "United Russia contains a wide spectrum of people, such as liberals, conservatives, nationalists, and populists. It would probably be better for democracy in Russia if they separated into distinct political parties. I think this will happen eventually, but not this time." In 2006, United Russia and eleven other political parties (including the far-right LDPR) signed an "anti-fascist pact" agreeing to combat nationalism, xenophobia, and religious hatred. In 2022, Putin claimed that Ukraine had been taken over by "neo-Nazis" who were perpetrating a genocide against ethnic Russians in the Donbas region, using this claim to justify the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. During that invasion, many Russian tanks flew the old flag of the Soviet Union alongside the pro-war "Z" military symbol, symbolizing the re-establishment of Russian domination over Ukraine. Russian forces also renamed Ukrainian towns to their Soviet-era names to reverse Ukraine's decommunization, while pro-government media personalities compared the Russo-Ukrainian War to the "Great Patriotic War" of 1941-1945 as a means of rallying Russian nationalist support for the conflict. Putin claimed that the dissolution of the Soviet Union was one of the greatest tragedies in history, and many scholars claimed that Putin was motivated by a desire to reform a Russian empire within the former USSR. Estimates suggest that around 20-30% of United Russia's voter base previously supported the CPRF, while between 40-60% of United Russia voters expressed some degree of nostalgia for the Soviet period.

United Russia was criticized by Alexander Litvinenko as running a "Mafia state", while Alexey Navalny called United Russia "the party of crooks and thieves". due to the continuing prevalence of corruption among major officials and allied businessmen. As Putin asserted his control over the post-Soviet oligarchs of Russia, Putin and the oligarchs controlled and exploited the criminal world to their mutual advantage. In 2018, Mark Galeotti wrote, "Since the restoration of central authority under President Vladimir Putin since the turn of the millennium, the new vory have adapted again, taking a lower profile, and even working for the state when they must....Many businesses and politicians sue methods that owe more to the underworld than to legal practice. The state hires hackers and arms gangsters to fight its wars. You can hear vor songs and vor slang on the streets...The gangs that prosper in modern Russia tend to do so by working with rather than against the state."

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