Pro-Kremlin candidates have suffered losses in local elections in Moscow as Vladimir Putin’s biggest critic hailed the success of his campaign to encourage strategic voting.

The election was closely watched by both sides following a summer of protests in the Russian capital against the Kremlin’s refusal to allow candidates allied with opposition leader Alexei Navalny on to the ballot.

According to Russian media reports the Kremlin banned opposition candidates after internal polling indicated they would win at least nine seats. While the city council has few powers, analysts say the Kremlin was reluctant to allow Navalny’s allies a foothold on the electoral ladder ahead of far more significant parliamentary polls due in 2021.

Navalny, 43, portrayed the city council elections as a referendum on Putin and the United Russia party that backs the president. He appealed to voters to cast their ballots for United Russia’s strongest challengers, even if they represented political parties that they would not normally vote for, such as the Communists.

Profile Who is Alexei Navalny? Show Hide Born in 1976 just outside Moscow, Alexei Navalny is a lawyer-turned-campaigner whose Anti-Corruption Foundation investigates the wealth of Vladimir Putin’s inner circle. He started out as a Russian nationalist, but emerged as the main leader of Russia's democratic opposition during the wave of protests that led up to the 2012 presidential election, and has since been a thorn in the Kremlin’s side. Navalny is barred from appearing on state television, but has used social media to his advantage. A 2017 documentary accusing the prime minister, Dmitry Medvedev, of corruption received more than 30m views on YouTube within two months.

He has been repeatedly arrested and jailed. The European court of human rights ruled that Russia violated Navalny's rights by holding him under house arrest in 2014. Election officials barred him from running for president in 2018 due to an embezzlement conviction that he claims was politically motivated. Navalny told the commission its decision would be a vote 'not against me, but against 16,000 people who have nominated me; against 200,000 volunteers who have been canvassing for me'. There has also been a physical price to pay. In April 2017, he was attacked with green dye that nearly blinded him in one eye, and in July 2019 he was taken from jail to hospital with symptoms that one of his doctors said could indicate poisoning. In 2020, he was again hospitalised after a suspected poisoning, and taken to Germany for treatment. The German government later said toxicology results showed Navalny was poisoned with a Novichok nerve agent. Photograph: Pavel Golovkin/AP

Although United Russia retained its majority in Moscow after Sunday’s vote, its share of seats on the 45-seat city council was slashed from 40 to 25. The Communist party took 13 seats, up from five last time, while the A Just Russia party won three seats. Both parties are widely seen as part of the Kremlin’s “loyal opposition”.

All four candidates from Yabloko, Russia’s oldest liberal party, won their districts. Yabloko was the only genuinely independent party allowed on the ballot in Moscow.

United Russia’s candidates all ran as nominal “independents” in an apparent attempt to distance themselves from their increasingly unpopular party. An opinion poll published before the election by an independent thinktank indicated that it was backed by just 11% of voters in Moscow. The state-run pollster said in April that Putin’s party was backed by 22% of voters in the Russian capital.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Russian National Guard servicemen detaining a man after a rally in Moscow calling for fair elections on 10 August. Photograph: Vasily Maximov/AFP/Getty Images

Discontent with the ruling party has been driven by a variety of factors including a five-year increase in the national pension age, growing economic hardship, and relentless allegations of corruption. The heavy-handed police response to protests that broke out in Moscow this summer also served to bring opposition figures together. Putin’s own ratings are at near-record lows, though still high by international standards.

Andrei Metelsky, who heads United Russia’s branch in Moscow, was the most high-profile of United Russia’s covert candidates to lose their seats on the council. The party described his election defeat to a little-known socialist backed by the Communist party as “unpleasant”. Navalny recently accused Metelsky of covering up his ownership of multimillion-pound properties in the Austrian Alps. Metelsky denies any wrongdoing.

In the run-up to the polls Navalny launched a “smart-voting” website and app aimed at making it easy for people to identify the candidates able to inflict the most damage on United Russia . “We can say clearly that smart voting has worked,” he said after the results.

Sergei Sobyanin, the Kremlin-backed mayor of Moscow, said the elections were the most competitive in recent history. “Passions flared,” he said.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A police officer stands guard near a voting booth in Moscow. Photograph: Shamil Zhumatov/Reuters

Although it was difficult to say exactly how great an influence strategic voting had on the final results, some of the victorious candidates acknowledged its role. Yandiev Magomet, who was nominated by the A Just Russia party, said Navalny’s backing was vital to his defeat of a far more high-profile United Russia candidate.

Magomet said, however, that he supported many of Putin’s policies. “But I was against the use of force against [election] protesters. These people wanted what’s best for Moscow,” he said.

During the protests in July and August more than 2,500 people were arrested by baton-wielding riot police amid chaotic scenes around Red Square. On Monday Michelle Bachelet, the UN’s human rights chief, called for an inquiry into allegations of excessive force by Russian police.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Michelle Bachelet. Photograph: Salvatore Di Nolfi/AP

Four people have been sentenced to prison on charges related to the election protests. The anti-Putin activist Konstantin Kotov was imprisoned for four years last week after being found guilty of attending five unsanctioned but peaceful protests.

Elsewhere, United Russia suffered a stunning loss in Khabarovsk, in the country’s far east, where the nationalist Liberal Democratic party of Russia (LDPR) won 34 out of 35 seats in the regional parliament. United Russia also lost its majority in Irkutsk, in eastern Siberia.

Putin’s party fared much better in governor elections. Its incumbents all triumphed in the first round. Six of its sitting governors also ran as independents, including in St Petersburg.

There were multiple allegations of vote fraud across Russia, including a voting urn reportedly being stolen from a polling station in St Petersburg. In Tuva, near Russia’s border with Mongolia, men on horseback opened fire at a van carrying election observers and journalists. No one was hurt in the incident.

State media said the elections were free and fair. Putin rejected suggestions that more candidates should have been allowed to stand, saying the quality of the candidates was more important than their quantity.