Russia Claims Thousands of Cyberattacks Hit Its Election Systems, but Evidence Is Thin

Russian authorities say they detected and blocked roughly 2,000 cyberattacks targeting the country's online voting platform and e-government systems during a three-day parliamentary election. Deputy Digital Development Minister Oleg Kachanov claimed no services were disrupted and that the newly deployed election system, Vybory 2.0, ran normally throughout. These claims have not been independently verified, and officials shared little technical detail about the attacks or who carried them out.

Separately, Russia's Central Election Commission reported over 3,000 waves of distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks against digital infrastructure during the voting period, including hits on the federal voting platform, the commission's website, e-government services, and telecom provider Rostelecom. Officials said the attacks mostly originated outside Russia, including the UK, Ukraine, Brazil and Mexico, and that none compromised election systems. The country's communications regulator also flagged phishing sites impersonating official election resources.

Despite official assurances, some real disruptions occurred. A technical failure took electronic voting terminals offline briefly in Moscow on the first day of voting, which officials attributed to a cyberattack. The Kremlin has blamed foreign actors, including Ukraine, but has not provided public evidence to support these attributions.