Russia's three-day election for the 450-seat State Duma ended Sunday with voter turnout approaching 57%, according to preliminary data from the Central Election Commission, with the vote counting continuing.

More than 111 million voters were eligible to cast ballots in the election, which ran from Friday to Sunday and combined voting at polling stations with remote electronic voting.

The turnout was above the 51.72% seen in the 2021 State Duma election, said the commission.

The commission had not yet released final nationwide results by Sunday evening.

Preliminary results were expected after the closure of the last polling stations, with the final distribution of the 450 seats to be determined after the counting of ballots from both the party-list and single-member district components.

Under Russia's mixed electoral system, 225 deputies are elected from federal party lists, with parties required to receive at least 5% of the vote to enter the Duma through this component.

Another 225 seats are contested in single-member constituencies.

Ten parties competed in the federal party-list vote. They included the five parliamentary parties — United Russia, the Communist Party, the Liberal Democratic Party, A Just Russia, and New People — as well as Rodina, the Communists of Russia, the Greens, the Pensioners' Party and the Party of Direct Democracy.

The Yabloko party was not included in the federal party-list ballot, but candidates nominated by Yabloko continued to contest single-member constituencies.

Voting system vulnerabilities were detected and filtered by security measures

Ella Pamfilova, the election commission chair, said the poll infrastructure had faced a large-scale cyberattack during the three-day vote.

According to Pamfilova, more than 100 million potentially dangerous attempts to affect election-related resources were detected and blocked, including attacks targeting the commission websites, the voting portal, and the Gosuslugi state services platform.

She said the cyberattacks had not been successful despite "a high level of impact" and that attempts to identify vulnerabilities in the voting system had been detected, with security filters put in place.

Pamfilova also said the commission had identified signs of Ukrainian involvement in attempts to interfere with telecommunications infrastructure.

She said attacks on the remote electronic voting system originated primarily from abroad, including from Ukraine and the UK, as well as from other countries and from IP addresses disguised as Russian.

She said Russian authorities expected further attempts to interfere with the election but were prepared to respond.

Pamfilova also said a representative of a political party had tried to introduce malware into the remote electronic voting system in Moscow, calling the incident an attempt to disrupt its operation.

Despite this unsuccessful sabotage, she said the election proceeded in line with Russian law and that voters showed a high level of involvement.

Drone attack on Moscow

Alongside the weekend elections, Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin said Russia had repelled the largest drone attack on the capital yet.

Sobyanin said more than 1,600 drones had been intercepted at different approaches since Saturday, including about 450 near Moscow.

He said several drones reached the territory of the Moscow Oil Refinery and one struck a residential building, adding that there were no fatalities in the incidents he described.

Sobyanin said the attack had been unprecedented in scale and appeared to have been planned with the aim of disrupting the election, but that the attempt had failed.

Defense Ministry reports mass drone and missile attacks

Russia's Defense Ministry said Ukrainian forces had attempted a mass attack on Russian territory on Saturday and Sunday using drones and Flamingo cruise missiles "to disrupt the State Duma election."

The ministry said Russian air defenses and military aviation had destroyed 1,951 attack drones and eight long-range cruise missiles over Russian regions during a 24-hour period. It said another cruise missile deviated from its course and fell in an uninhabited area.

According to the ministry, all Flamingo missiles launched toward the Moscow region were destroyed by Russian air defenses before reaching civilian facilities.

The ministry said the attack had failed to achieve its stated objectives and that Russian forces would continue and intensify strikes against military facilities in Ukraine’s capital Kyiv in response to attacks on civilian sites in Russia.

The election was the first parliamentary vote in Russia since 2022 and was held amid the ongoing conflict with Ukraine. Voting also took place in Russian-controlled areas of Ukraine, a move rejected by Kyiv and condemned by some Western governments. (AA)