A United Russia ad near the Kremlin showing Svyatenko with Luzhkov and reading, “We’ll Preserve Moscow Together.”

In the run-up to the City Duma elections, United Russia has blanketed Moscow with campaign billboards, posters and banners, demonstrating the strong grip the pro-Kremlin and pro-City Hall party has on the capital.

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Smaller parties, forced to fight for a share of Sunday’s vote, have been distributing leaflets and waging a war of campaign ads that in some cases has turned ugly.

Up until now, the City Duma has played a minor role in city politics, but this is set to change now that elections for regional leaders, including Moscow’s powerful mayor, have been abolished. The 35-member Duma that is elected Sunday will have the right to approve or reject the president’s choice for the next mayor in 2007, and the prospect of this new power has made this perhaps the most heated city election yet.

The Rodina party faces being taken off the ballot because of a complaint filed by the Liberal Democratic Party, its rival for the nationalist vote.

The Yabloko party, the chosen representative of Moscow’s liberals, has been attacked by an obscure party called Free Russia. With no hope of making it into the Duma itself, Free Russia has been running a television campaign ad featuring a bright green apple, Yabloko’s symbol, shriveling up and turning brown.

“Do not vote for Yabloko — it’s rotten,” says the ad, which has been running daily on the TV Center and Stolitsa channels.

Sergei Mitrokhin, head of Yabloko’s Moscow organization, said he believed the attack was orchestrated by Kremlin propagandists, specifically Gleb Pavlovsky.

“It is the first time that such an open smear campaign has been led against us,” Mitrokhin said.

Pavlovsky denied any involvement in Free Russia’s ad campaign. “I have nothing to do with this party and do not even know what kind of ideology they have or who their leaders are. This is some kind of delirium that I do not know how to deny or comment on,” he said.

Feminist writer Maria Arbatova, who is a co-leader of Free Russia, denied that her party’s campaign focused only on discrediting Yabloko.

“Our campaign is aimed against United Russia, Rodina and other parties,” she said. “However, we want to show voters that Yabloko has exhausted itself and the party list is pathetically free of serious political figures.”

Arbatova ran unsuccessfully for the State Duma in 1999 with the Union of Right Forces, or SPS, and again in 2003, when she co-chaired the Human Rights party. The other two candidates at the top of Free Russia’s list are entrepreneur Alexander Ryavkin and City Duma Deputy Vladimir Shmelyov.

Another of Free Russia’s television ads includes short interviews with several Muscovites of various ages saying they had voted for Yabloko in the past but then had been disappointed and turned to other political parties.

A third ad, which showed Yabloko leader Grigory Yavlinsky and called for not voting for his party, was found to violate the law. After Yabloko complained, the Central Election Commission ruled on Friday that Free Russia could not use the ad since it did not have written permission from Yavlinsky to use the footage of him.

Political observers said Free Russia was ordered to act as a spoiler and was not counting on winning enough votes to get into the Duma.

“Free Russia is a typical killer party exploiting a strategy that has been used in regional elections dozens of times,” said Vladimir Pribylovsky, a political analyst with the Panorama think tank.

Alexei Makarkin, deputy director of the Center for Political Technologies, said that the attack on Yabloko was designed to exploit the weak points of the party, which has been struggling since a painful defeat in the 2003 parliamentary elections. “And it might work to pull votes away from Yabloko,” he said.

To boost its chances of breaking through the 10 percent barrier to get into the City Duma, Yabloko has joined with SPS, the Green party and the United People’s Party of Soldiers’ Mothers to put forward a single list of candidates.

Free Russia’s campaign might spoil Yabloko’s chances but it in no way poses a threat to United Russia, which according to recent polls can count on more than 40 percent of the vote. The City Hall-sponsored party has been able to rely heavily on the use of so-called administrative resources.

United Russia posters that read “We Love Moscow, We Rely on Ourselves, We are Proud of Russia!” can be seen on virtually every corner of the city and in all public transport. Banners reminding voters of the party’s position on the ballot flutter along major bridges.

In trolleybuses, passengers often reach up for a strap to hang onto and find themselves holding a new plastic model with the smiling face of a United Russia candidate staring at them.

Posters with United Russia candidates promising prosperity and security to each Muscovite hang in beauty salons, supermarkets and medical clinics.

Other ubiquitous posters feature roughly sketched men and women wearing overalls in United Russia blue and mouthing poetic messages that can be loosely translated as, “All Muscovites agree: The authorities need to be closer to the people and provide better oversight.”

In northern parts of the city, residents received postcards featuring swans and greetings from United Russia’s Moscow branch for Mother’s Day, an almost unknown holiday on Nov. 27.

In southern Moscow, Zaira Magomedova said that the administration of school No. 420, where her 8-year-old daughter goes, called all parents to a meeting last Thursday, where they were asked on to vote for the local United Russia candidate.

“There was absolutely no reason for this meeting. We had had the last one only a month ago,” Magomedova said by telephone. “Instead of discussing school-related issues, parents were forced to listen to a speech a United Russia candidate delivered about himself and his party.”

Almost all of central Moscow is dotted with posters featuring United Russia candidate Inna Svyatenko posing alone or shaking hands with Mayor Yury Luzhkov.

Svyatenko, a City Duma deputy since 2001, is running for one of the 15 seats elected directly in individual districts. Her campaign rests on the promises that residents of the center, whom she would represent, would not be resettled to the suburbs and would have access to better free medical services and cheaper food. According to her campaign leaflet, Svyatenko is an Air Force lieutenant colonel who graduated from the mathematics and cybernetics department of Moscow State University.

Municipal street cleaners were ordered to glue posters of United Russia candidates on the walls and doors of apartment buildings while removing those of any other party, the Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper reported.

“The party placed the heads of the administrations of all nine city districts on its list, so it is no wonder that municipal services were ordered to ensure that voters don’t miss the presence of United Russia candidates in the race,” Pribylovsky said.

Vladimir Yevstafyev, co-chairman of the Russian Ecological Party of the Green, a City Duma candidate, said city billboards appeared to have been reserved for United Russia months ago.

“We wanted to buy several billboards, but were told that everything was already sold out. Now we can see to whom,” said Yevstafyev, who is the head of the Russian Association of Advertising Agencies.

Their campaign materials not nearly so visible across the city, the other parties have turned to other ways of reaching out to voters.

The campaigns of both Yabloko and Rodina rely heavily on calling constituents’ homes and delivering leaflets to their door.

Representatives of Rodina and the Communist Party, wearing smocks with the parties’ symbols, distribute leaflets outside metro stations.

The Communist leaflets contain populist messages such as promises to stop the rise of electricity and housing bills, to reduce the prices of food and medicine, and to improve the city’s public transport system.

Yabloko’s campaign leaflets promise voters an end to police violence.

Rodina and LDPR appeal to nationalist sentiments by calling for the capital to be cleared of migrants from the Caucasus and Central Asia, and both have produced television campaign ads that have been accused of inciting ethnic hatred.

Rodina was taken to court on a complaint from LDPR that was supported by the city election commission. The Moscow City Court ruled on Saturday that the Rodina ad incited ethnic hatred and that the party should thus be barred from Sunday’s vote. Rodina remains on the ballot pending its appeal.

LDPR’s ad, which never aired, is also being investigated at the request of the city election commission.