Russia’s top election official has urged citizens to accept potential internet and mobile network restrictions during the upcoming State Duma elections, framing the trade-off as a matter of life and death. “Let’s put it on the scales: you couldn’t get online, or people’s lives were saved,” Central Election Commission (CEC) chairwoman Ella Pamfilova told a joint meeting with the Federation Council, asking voters not to “grumble” over disruptions. She confirmed that regional authorities may limit connectivity to safeguard against drone attacks and cyber sabotage, particularly in border and recently annexed territories that are “experiencing very high UAV activity as never before.” The CEC, she said, has already adapted its remote electronic voting system to function under such constraints, with backup Wi-Fi points and reserve power sources at polling stations.

Viewed from Moscow, the security argument sits alongside a candid acknowledgement of a difficult social climate. Pamfilova warned that the elections will unfold in an “uneasy atmosphere” marked by public fatigue, disillusionment, and depressive moods. “People’s sense of justice is heightened as never before; they react very painfully to any kind of inattention or bureaucracy,” she noted. The campaign is vast in scale: more than 2,200 races across the country will fill over 20,700 mandates, including the 450-seat Duma. Over 1.6 million young Russians will be eligible to vote for the first time, despite what Pamfilova called a “demographic pit.” Remote electronic voting will be deployed in no more than 33 regions, while four main forms of in-person balloting and five supplementary methods—including early voting and extraterritorial precincts—are being activated explicitly “for the sake of security.”

The overseas dimension reveals a contrasting picture. The CEC plans to open more than 300 polling stations in over 150 countries, but Pamfilova cautioned that voting possibilities abroad will be “adjusted depending on relations and the situation in each country.” A newly formed coordination group involving the foreign ministry, parliament, and presidential administration will manage international observer reception, even as CEC member Pavel Andreev predicted “pressure and attacks on the external perimeter” from “unfriendly states.” By comparison, Colombia’s just-concluded presidential second round saw a smooth diaspora operation: over 1.4 million eligible Colombians cast ballots in 67 countries, with the largest turnouts in the United States, Spain, and Venezuela, under standard consular arrangements and without any talk of connectivity restrictions for security.

Analysts in London and Brussels note that the Russian approach reflects a broader securitisation of electoral processes in conflict-adjacent states, where digital infrastructure is increasingly treated as a vulnerability rather than a tool of participation. The CEC’s insistence that the vote must become “one of the points of stability” and contribute to “our coming victory” underscores the political weight placed on the exercise. Yet the combination of possible internet blackouts, a weary electorate, and selective overseas access raises questions about how the legitimacy of the result will be perceived internationally. With the Duma race set for 18–20 September, the commission is entering what Pamfilova called a “combat mode of electoral mobilisation”—a phrase that captures the extraordinary fusion of ballot-box politics and wartime security logic now shaping Russia’s managed democracy.