Drone strikes disrupted voting on the first day of three-day parliamentary and regional elections held in southern Russia and parts of occupied Ukraine.
Ella Pamfilova, chairwoman of Russia’s Central Election Commission, said a polling station in the Krasnodar region was moved to another building after its windows were shattered by damage caused by a drone.
In the Luhansk region of eastern occupied Ukraine, damage to energy infrastructure caused power outages at 14 polling stations. Pamfilova said voting continued at those locations using backup power sources.
Election officials and voters took shelter in Sochi
Election officials and voters were directed to shelters in the southern Russian resort city of Sochi after an air raid warning was issued Friday morning. Sochi Mayor Andrey Proshunin provided the information.
In addition to parliamentary elections, gubernatorial and local legislative elections are also being held in some Russian regions. The vote is the first election for the State Duma since Vladimir Putin ordered the large-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Cyberattack reported against electronic voting system
Russian election officials said the remote electronic voting system had been targeted by cyberattacks. The head of Moscow’s election commission said numerous information technology specialists were on duty throughout the day to prevent the attacks.
Pamfilova also warned before the elections that mobile internet outages could be imposed across Russia to disable drone guidance systems. She said these outages could not be used as grounds for canceling the vote.
Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin claimed that more than 350 Ukrainian drones heading toward the capital had been detected between Thursday night and Friday morning, and that at least 64 of them had been destroyed before reaching Moscow. Russia’s Defense Ministry also said that 629 Ukrainian drones had been intercepted overnight over Russia and Crimea, which it says was annexed.
Attacks in Ukraine caused deaths and damage
Ukrainian officials said two people were killed in an attack by the Russian military on a business in the Zhytomyr region in the country’s northwest. Separate attacks around Kyiv and in other parts of Ukraine also left many people injured, officials said.
Infrastructure facilities, schools, clinics and residential buildings were damaged in the attacks in Ukraine. Russian election officials also said that one of their colleagues was killed in a drone attack in the occupied Zaporizhzhia region earlier this week.
