Russia votes on final day of parliamentary election amid cyberattacks and observer complaints

Russians are casting ballots on the final day of parliamentary voting, with the pro-Putin United Russia party widely expected to win. The election is taking place across the country and is being watched closely because it is the first parliamentary vote since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. It is also unfolding after the only party opposing the war, Yabloko, was removed from the ballot in August.

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The Central Election Commission said on Sunday that election infrastructure had been hit by more than 1,000 waves of distributed denial-of-service attacks over the past few days. Commission chair Ella Pamfilova said the level of impact was assessed as very high. She added that the attacks appeared to have been carried out by highly professional, well-coordinated groups using artificial intelligence tools.

Yabloko said one of its election observers lost consciousness after being subjected to force by police in St. Petersburg on Saturday. The party also said its observers were being denied access to polling stations and that their movement was being restricted.

Grigory Yavlinsky, Yabloko's co-founder, said the decision to bar the party from the election meant refusing to engage with people asking uncomfortable questions. The vote matters because it is one of the few nationwide political tests in Russia since the war in Ukraine began. United Russia has won every parliamentary election in the country since 2003, and the current contest is expected to extend that record.

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At the same time, the exclusion of Yabloko has sharpened scrutiny of the election's competitiveness and the space available for anti-war views. The election also comes as Russian authorities face wider security pressure linked to the war. The Moscow governor described the capital as having suffered the largest-scale attack since the conflict began, while air defences were reported to have shot down large numbers of drones across the country.

Those developments add to the sense that the vote is taking place in a highly strained security environment. What remains unclear is the full effect of the cyberattacks on election systems and whether the reported restrictions on observers were isolated or more widespread. It is also not yet clear how the final turnout and results will be affected by the absence of Yabloko from the ballot.

The outcome is expected to confirm United Russia's dominance, but the process itself is likely to remain under scrutiny.

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