Putin's party set to retain parliament majority

MOSCOW, Sept 19 (AFP): Russian President Vladimir Putin's party was set Sunday to retain a majority in parliament on the last day of three-day elections in which most Kremlin critics were barred from the ballot.

The vote comes in the wake of an unprecedented crackdown on the opposition this year, with Russian authorities jailing Putin's best-known domestic foe Alexei Navalny and banning his organisations as "extremist".

In the lead-up to this weekend's vote, all of his top allies were arrested or had fled the country, with anyone associated with his groups kept from running in the parliamentary and local polls scheduled to close at 8:00 pm Sunday.

"These essentially aren't elections. People in effect have no choice," 43-year-old businessman Vladimir Zakharov told AFP in Russia's second city Saint Petersburg.