The parliamentary elections are today under way in Russia as 107 million people are called to elect 450 members to the Duma.

Russia, a country of continental proportions, has eleven different time zones. Consequently, the first citizens of the country to vote were those in Chukotka on the border with the US state of Alaska and on the Kamtschatka Peninsula. The last voting post will close in the exclave of Kaliningrad on the Baltic Sea at 1800 GMT Sunday.

The level of security for these elections has far exceeded any expectation. Nearly half a million interior ministry staff and the armed forces were deployed in order to make the polling operation go according to plan.

And all things seem to be going as planned as United Russia, President Vladimir Putin's party, is estimated to sweep to an overwhelming victory.

According to the country’s constitution, Putin isn’t allowed to run for a third, consecutive term in office at elections in March 2008. It is still not sure how the 55-year-old will continue to influence the political scene in Russia, but one thing is certain: he’ll do it.

Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov, a co-chairman of United Russia, said the party will probably announce its candidate for Russia’s presidency somewhere around Dec. 17, Interfax reported.

A few weeks ago, Putin said that a massive support in this election will give him a “moral right'' to continue his control over politics in Russia.

"Anything less than 60 percent will look like defeat, and perhaps lead Putin to conclude that he is not all that indispensable after all,'' Andrew Kuchins of the Washington- based Center for Strategic & International Studies said in a Nov. 30 commentary.

These elections were constantly criticized at an international level. The last high-ranking official to express the discontent with how the elections are carried out in Russia was Chancellor Angela Merkel. She was broadcasted on German radio Sunday saying that the limited number of international observers puts a big question mark over the elections.

According to Interfax, a Russian state-run news agency, the election commission chairman said that 299 foreign observers have been accredited.