Overview
- Voting for the State Duma is running on a three‑day schedule that began Sept. 18 and continued into its second day on Sept. 19 with officials reporting powerful, ongoing cyberattacks on Moscow's electronic voting system.
- Central Election Commission chair Ella Pamfilova and other authorities told state media the assaults targeted Moscow's e‑voting and that technicians were repelling attacks while restoring affected communications.
- Opposition groups reported problems at polling stations on Sept. 19, including denied access for party observers and a Yabloko observer in St. Petersburg who lost consciousness while being arrested and was later charged.
- Balloting is taking place across Russia and in Russian‑held parts of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, with the Kremlin presenting the vote as a measure of support for the war and United Russia widely expected to retain control.
- The reported attacks prompted a modest drop in market and prediction‑market confidence for a United Russia clean sweep and drew criticism from Western and regional actors over restricted observers and the exclusion of anti‑war candidates such as Yabloko.