Russia reports over 1,000 cyberattacks and 450 Moscow drones during Duma elections

Cyberattacks on election systems

Russia concluded its three-day parliamentary elections for the State Duma on Sunday, 20 September 2026, after voting commenced nationwide on Friday, 18 September 2026. Throughout the balloting period, public election infrastructure faced extensive distributed denial of service attacks intended to disable servers by overwhelming them with continuous requests. Central Election Commission Chairperson Ella Pamfilova reported that security personnel recorded high volumes of malicious network traffic against state servers. In an official briefing reported by Russian news agencies, Pamfilova detailed the scale of the electronic offensive.

“More than 1,000 DDoS attacks have been recorded against the Russian infrastructure participating in the electoral process.”

Pamfilova stated that targeted operations also struck telecommunications networks across the country as a whole. Commission representatives maintained that defensive countermeasures absorbed the incoming traffic, allowing voting platforms to remain operational without prolonged outages.

Regional impact and telecom disruptions

Electronic voting procedures were implemented across approximately 30 regions of the country alongside standard in-person paper balloting. On Saturday, 19 September 2026, the Central Election Commission reported that the online balloting portal in Moscow experienced intense cyber interference that persisted throughout the day. Concurrently, the Russian Ministry of Digital Development announced an attempted physical sabotage against telecommunications lines situated in the Russian Far East. Russian state agencies reported that technical crews contained the electronic disturbances and restored affected communication lines in the eastern territory. Regional election committees confirmed that digital balloting systems continued processing votes despite the sustained network pressure.

Drone barrage on Moscow region

Physical security incidents occurred alongside the network attacks on Sunday, 20 September 2026, during the final day of the parliamentary vote. Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin reported that air defense systems intercepted more than 1,600 drones across Russian territory, with 450 unmanned aircraft directed specifically toward the capital city. Sobyanin addressed the aerial strikes in an official statement posted to his Telegram account.

“This unprecedented attack was clearly designed with the aim of disrupting the elections.”

In the wider Moscow Oblast, Governor Andrey Vorobyov confirmed that overnight drone strikes resulted in two deaths. Vorobyov also reported that falling debris from intercepted aircraft caused damage to a large oil refinery in the Moscow region.

Accusations of external interference

Russian government authorities attributed both the electronic sabotage and the drone strikes to coordinated planning from foreign actors. Pamfilova asserted that the cyber operations were conducted by highly organized teams utilizing artificial intelligence tools to coordinate simultaneous traffic surges. She claimed that the digital attacks showed clear signs of Ukrainian involvement, though the Central Election Commission did not release supporting documentation to confirm the connection. Russian President Vladimir Putin similarly accused Ukraine of attempting to disrupt the parliamentary elections. Independent confirmation of the origin of the network attacks was not provided by Russian state authorities.