Official turnout at Russian precinct election commission No. 8158 in Cyprus during the recent vote for the State Duma was about 10 times higher than the turnout recorded by the independent Vote Abroad exit poll, organizers told The Insider. According to their estimate, more than 10,000 ballots were stuffed in Cyprus. The additional votes appeared to benefit not only Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party, but also A Just Russia and the Liberal Democratic Party (LDPR).
Precinct commission No. 8158 covered voting locations in the coastal cities of Paphos and Limassol, as well as the Russian Embassy in the country’s capital, Nicosia. According to official data from the Russian Central Election Commission, 15,843 people voted at the precinct, where the ruling United Russia party received 10,897 votes — 68.78% overall. The LDPR came second with 1,095 votes (6.91%), the Communist Party was third with 954 (6.02%), New People was fourth with 785 (5.95%), and A Just Russia was fifth with 695 (4.39%).
Those results differ sharply from the independent Vote Abroad exit poll, which showed New People receiving 46.3% of the vote at the Cyprus polling locations, with United Russia taking just 12.8%. The exit poll’s organizers told The Insider that the discrepancy could only be explained by fraud. One of the organizers, Margarita Kuchusheva, said:
“At the three locations, we surveyed most of the people who came to vote and counted 945 people. We were there for almost 80% of the voting period. From 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday in Paphos, from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Saturday in Limassol [voting in those cities took place only on Sept. 18 and 19], and on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday at the embassy in Nicosia from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., except during a heavy thunderstorm Friday morning and for two hours Saturday. During the storm, I was sitting in a car outside the embassy and recorded zero turnout.
All the polling places had one entrance and one exit. We counted turnout. How could the official turnout be about 10 times higher? The only major period we did not cover was Friday in Limassol. But that was a workday — it is impossible that 90% of voters came specifically during those hours, specifically in Limassol, on a working Friday. These are fantastical results. Even if you include embassy employees and their families, the numbers still do not add up. That means at least 10,000 ballots were stuffed. And they were added not only for United Russia, but also for A Just Russia and the LDPR.”
Voting in Cyprus also took place at precinct commission No. 8439 in Nicosia at the Russian Center for Science and Culture. That polling station was not covered by the independent exit poll, but it still remains statistically all but impossible that the official election results published for the country correspond to reality.
The Insider previously analyzed Central Election Commission data from overseas polling stations at Russian embassies worldwide, finding that New People’s share of the vote abroad was over three times higher than its official result inside Russia, while United Russia’s was about 18 percentage points lower. Russian voters abroad also produced results that differed significantly from the nationwide totals in the 2024 presidential election.
Cyprus, particularly Nicosia, stood out as one of the biggest anomalies in Russia’s 2024 presidential election abroad. Official results showed more than 53,000 votes cast in Cyprus (compared to just 5,276 in 2018), including about 42,000 at one Nicosia polling station, while independent monitors estimated actual turnout may have been closer to 13,000 and that roughly 40,000 official votes could have been fictitious or otherwise manipulated. Russian Election Monitor called the presidential vote in 2024 the “largest overseas electoral fraud in Russia's modern history.”
