Election chief counts three observer complaints; The Insider counts hundreds of violation reports

One number, one source. Turnout reached 52.62% at 15:14 Moscow time on the final day, past the 2021 total. TASS, Life.ru and Regnum carry it; the exile outlet Vot Tak repeats it through TASS. All four trace it to the Central Election Commission. We hold no independent count.

Two counts of what went wrong.

The briefing. Pamfilova said voting was going "in full accordance with the law" (Interfax) and "calmly" (Regnum), and that reports of observers barred en masse were "fakes" that "were not confirmed". Interfax, Life.ru and Regnum each carry one line of that briefing as a whole story.

Yakutsk. Interfax reports "over 400" ballots invalidated at a station in Yakutia; Life.ru reports all 409 from the safe at station No. 756, annulled after it was opened. Both attribute the account to Pamfilova.

Not settled. Whether turnout is what the commission says. What the hundreds of violation reports are counted against: no report we hold sets the two counts beside each other. Who ordered polls closed early in occupied Donetsk — Vedomosti gives the reason, "for safety", and names nobody. No report we hold quotes a voter.

This is a story about how one election day is counted: the same Sunday that Russia's election authorities call calm and lawful, and that independent and exile Russian outlets describe as a day of complaints.

How it got here. The State Duma is the lower house of Russia's parliament — 450 seats, a five-year term, half filled from party lists and half from single-member districts. The last election was in 2021. Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022, after a war in the country's east that started in 2014, and this vote, spread over three days and ending on Sunday 20 September 2026, is the first parliamentary election since. Espreso TV, summarising Politico, reports that Russia's Supreme Court in August 2026 barred Yabloko — the only openly anti-war party — from putting up a national list, and that Yulia Navalnaya urged a vote for candidates who at least do not openly back the war. Voting was also held in the occupied parts of the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions, which Russia claims as its own and Ukraine does not. Espreso reports Russian authorities claiming more than 3.5 million voters there, voting beginning at the end of August, and the European Commission calling the exercise a further breach of international law that the EU will not recognise.

The actors. The Central Election Commission, chaired by Ella Pamfilova, is the single source of every official figure here, and Russian state and pro-state outlets carry her. The Insider, Vot Tak and Verstka report the same days from outside the country and keep their own tally. Ukraine's press reports a vote held under occupation.

What is at stake. Reuters, relayed by Espreso, reports President Vladimir Putin calling the vote a test of support for the war in Ukraine. A high turnout is the evidence the Kremlin can cite for that support; the count of violations is the case against it.

Where it stands. Voting has closed. No result appears in any report we hold.