An anonymous group calling itself CikLeak claims to have broken into systems belonging to Russia's Central Election Commission and vendors behind Vybory, the state platform that administers elections, days before voting for all 450 State Duma seats begins. The group says it stole internal documents, server configurations, passwords and employee communications from the commission and contractors including Rostelecom, and provided the material to the independent outlet Important Stories, which says it authenticated the documents. It is unclear how deeply the hackers penetrated election infrastructure or whether they reached systems directly involved in voting or counting. CikLeak says it does not intend to disrupt the vote but to expose "opportunities for authorities to manipulate election results," and urged Russians to vote in person on the final day. The claim comes as CEC Chair Ella Pamfilova describes the intensity and volume of attacks on election infrastructure as unprecedented, and a day after officials tested Vybory, its remote electronic voting system and video surveillance, identifying the video feed as a "weak link." The vote is the first federal election on the Vybory 2.0 platform and the first since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

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