Voting in Russia’s national elections, held over the three-days of Sept. 18-20, ended this evening. The first official but preliminary results are expected to be released on Monday. All 450 seats in the State Duma were up for election (ten parties are reported to have contended), with voters in the new Russian regions of the Donbass and Novorossiya voting for the first time for State Duma representatives. Candidates for over 20,000 other regional and municipal posts were also on the ballot, as well as the governors of 11 of Russia’s 89 regions. President Vladimir Putin, in Sept. 16 pre-election address, called on voters to use the election as “our collective response to those who seek to undermine Russia, slow down its development, or strip away our sovereignty or our right to determine our own future.”

Ukraine—which has used NATO’s Ukrainian war on Russia as the pretext to ban minimally 11 political parties and any domestic elections, including the presidential elections required by May of 2024, —carried out its largest attack on Russia yet while Russia’s elections were taking place. According to the Russian Ministry of Defense, Russian air defense shot down over 1,951 attack drones and eight long-range cruise missiles over 20 Russian regions, plus the Black Sea, within a 24 hour-period on Sept. 19-20 alone. Some got through. Moscow and the region around it took the brunt of the assault. In Moscow proper, the main oil refinery and a residential building suffered the most damage, but more damage was reported in the surrounding Moscow region, where apartment blocks were reportedly hit.

Russian Foreign Ministry’s Ambassador-at-Large Rodion Miroshnik charged that Ukraine delivered strikes on “areas where polling stations are located, or where they were supposed to be located,” TASS reported. Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin noted that “this unprecedented attack was clearly planned with the aim of disrupting the elections. The enemy did not succeed.”