Russia Concludes Parliamentary Vote Amid Cyberattacks and Massive Drone Strike on Moscow
Voting in Russia's parliamentary elections wrapped up Sunday, with the ruling United Russia party expected to win again, as the country reported waves of cyberattacks on election systems and its largest drone attack on Moscow since the war began.
Russia wrapped up several days of voting for a new State Duma on Sunday, 20 September. Analysts widely anticipate another win for the ruling United Russia party, which has topped every parliamentary election since 2003. This marks the first Duma vote since Moscow's full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022, making the outcome a potential, if indirect, indicator of domestic sentiment toward a war that has increasingly touched life inside Russia itself.
Opposition party excluded
In August, Russia's Supreme Court removed Yabloko, the only party openly opposing the war, from the ballot, though some of its candidates reportedly remain able to contest individual district seats. Yabloko co-founder Grigory Yavlinsky condemned the ruling, arguing that barring his party amounts to refusing dialogue with those who raise uncomfortable questions for the authorities, and reaffirmed the party's support for a ceasefire, diplomacy and peace, as well as preventing nuclear war. On Saturday, Yabloko said one of its election observers lost consciousness after police in St. Petersburg used force against them, and complained that observers were being denied access to polling stations and had their movement restricted.
Cyberattacks and a record drone barrage
Central Election Commission chief Ella Pamfilova said more than 1,000 waves of DDoS attacks had targeted election infrastructure in recent days, describing the impact as very high and attributing the attacks to highly professional, coordinated groups using artificial intelligence tools. Separately, Moscow mayor Sergey Sobyanin reported the capital's largest-scale attack since the war began, saying air defences had downed over 1,600 drones nationwide since Saturday, 450 of them headed for Moscow. Several drones reached an oil refinery and one struck a residential building, though no deaths were reported there; two people were killed elsewhere in the Moscow region. Sobyanin accused Ukraine of trying to disrupt the elections. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy confirmed strikes on an oil facility and a logistics site in the Moscow region overnight, adding that Russia had fired more than 2,000 attack drones, 1,700 aerial bombs and 19 missiles at Ukraine over the past week.
