Ukraine’s Cyberattack Cripples Russia’s Online Voting System on Election Day

Cyber specialists from Ukraine’s Defense Intelligence carried out a large-scale attack on the digital infrastructure of Russia’s Central Election Commission (CEC) during the so-called “single voting day” on September 14.

A source within Ukrainian intelligence told Ukrinform that the operation was aimed at disrupting online voting in Russia’s elections—staged not only across the country but also illegally in temporarily occupied Ukrainian territories.

The powerful DDoS attack struck the core infrastructure that enabled Russia’s voting process. It targeted the servers of the Central Election Commission along with the remote electronic voting platform used in mayoral and gubernatorial races, disrupted the backbone routers of state-owned telecom provider Rostelecom, and hit the servers of the Gosuslugi digital services portal.

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As a result, online voting services were paralyzed for a period of time, with many Russians unable to cast ballots in regional elections.

“In the CEC building the internet went down—the attack is underway,” said Ella Pamfilova, head of Russia’s Central Election Commission.

Roskomnadzor, Russia’s state communications watchdog, also confirmed disruptions, admitting that “due to failures in Rostelecom’s network, traffic degradation occurred on the backbone system.”

Earlier, cyber units of Ukraine’s Defense Intelligence launched a large-scale operation against Russia, disabling fuel payment systems, disrupting telecommunications infrastructure, and knocking out dozens of online platforms.

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