ELECTION UPDATE:

Vladimir Zhirinovsky successfully reincarnated his brownshirt Liberal Democratic Party as the Zhirinovsky Bloc. The Central Election Commission barred the LDP from competing in December’s parliamentary elections after several of its candidates failed to comply with financial-disclosure rules. The CEC did register the Zhirinovsky Bloc, which will field eighty-four candidates for the 450-seat State Duma. The CEC also registered Spas, a movement headed by neo-fascist Aleksandr Barkashov. Spas stands in for Barkashov’s Russian National Unity movement, banned by a Moscow city court.