Russia's federal censor sent a notice to the Communist Party (KPRF) warning that its website could be blocked over an announcement about an upcoming protest, the party's central committee secretary Sergey Obukhov said on Friday, September 24.

During the State Duma elections, Russian passport holders from the Donetsk and Luhansk "People's Republics" -- two unrecognized territories in eastern Ukraine -- cast their ballots in the neighboring Rostov region of Russia. The de facto authorities in the region organized hundreds of buses and a dozen trains to transport voters across the border. Many of the Donbas residents were handed their Russian passports right before they voted -- the buses took them directly to the passport office and then shuttled them to polling stations. At Meduza's request, journalist Gleb Golod traveled to the Matveyevo-Kurgansky district of the Rostov region, where most of the polling stations for Donbas residents were set up. There, he spoke to voters about the candidates they supported, their expectations for the elections, and what they think about the powers that be in Moscow.

The graphs below are based on voting results released by Russia's Central Election Commission and compiled by independent analyst Sergey Shpilkin. They demonstrate the relationship between turnout and support for the country's two most popular political parties, United Russia and the Communist Party (KPRF), at individual polling stations nationwide. (The two small blotches at the right end of both charts represent results in Moscow's electronic voting.)

Five climbers died after getting lost in a blizzard on Russia's Mount Elbrus on Thursday, September 23. The group, which consisted of tourists and several professional guides, was at an altitude of 5,400 meters (over 17,700 feet) when weather conditions began to deteriorate severely. Search and rescue workers found the surviving 14 climbers and brought them down the mountain over the course of several hours. All of the survivors were hospitalized and eight of them are in moderately serious condition. Regional investigators announced on Friday that a criminal case has been launched on charges of rendering services that do not meet safety requirements.

Elections to local parliaments took place in 39 Russian regions last weekend (September 17-19), at the same time as the elections to the State Duma. In a new report, RBC breaks down how the voting results in these regions changed since the last elections in 2016. Though United Russia won the most votes in all 39 regional parliamentary elections, its victory wasn't as resounding as it was five years ago. By comparison, the Communist Party (KPRF) saw better results at the polls in 34 of the 39 regions. Meduza summarizes the regional election results for each of Russia's main political parties here.

Roskomnadzor has started to maintain a registry of major social networks, the Russian censorship agency announced on Wednesday, September 22.

Candidates to the State Duma from a variety of political forces announced the creation of a coalition seeking a ban on electronic voting in Russia.

The Russian Attorney General's office is seeking to block websites that redistribute content created by Alexey Navalny's outlawed Anti-Corruption Foundation (the FBK).

Moscow's Election Monitoring Public Committee "didn't uncover traces of hacking and ballot stuffing in electronic voting," said the group's leader, Ekho Moskvy editor-in-chief Alexey Venediktov, on Thursday, September 23.

Moscow's Election Monitoring Public Committee has instructed its technical team to recount the city's electronic votes in last weekend's parliamentary elections, the group's deputy chairman, Ekho Moskvy radio station editor-in-chief Alexey Venediktov, announced on Wednesday. The decision apparently acknowledges complaints about irregularities in the capital's online voting, though the recount will have no legal force. "It's just a crosscheck," Venediktov explained. Meduza breaks down what this means exactly.