Out of the black box:
new ways to understand Russia
using data
Publications 7
Manipulation in e-voting system in the Moscow City Duma elections
We investigate the vulnerabilities of Moscow’s e-voting system, focusing on the substitution of candidate identifiers as a method for manipulating election results. The 2024 Moscow City Duma elections provided substantial evidence of such manipulation, where candidate identifiers assigned to votes were altered. This manipulation allowed votes initially cast for opposition candidates to be reassigned to those from the ruling party, United Russia.
Read the reportCorrupted code: exposing fraud tactics in Russian
e-voting system
The first experiments with e-voting in Russia began in 2019. Back then, the main issues were the system's lack of transparency and technical glitches, but by 2024, observers had identified numerous cases of direct fraud: vote manipulation, account theft, result tampering, and others. In this report, Cedar highlights the major risks of e-voting systems using the Russian example.
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State of open data in Russia during the war
Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Russian authorities have been regularly removing data from public access. Nearly 600 datasets disappeared from the "open data" sections of official websites of federal executive bodies. However, despite military censorship, access to many data fields is preserved. Openness infrastructure continue to operate due to the high inertia of the bureaucratic system and the middle-level bureaucrats' efforts to protect their turf.
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Tailored propaganda: how Russia manipulates public opinion in VK
Cedar analysed the media consumption of over 30,000 VK users, reflecting the socio-demographic characteristics of the Russian population. We found that propaganda adapts content style and narratives to different social groups and uses targeting methods to deliver them. Tailored propaganda posts are distributed centrally through networks of groups with multi-million audiences.
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How to uncover electoral fraud in Russia using statistics: a complete guide
Vladimir Putin won the presidential election for the fifth time, receiving a record 87% of the votes in the history of modern Russia, with an equally record turnout of 77%. With it comes a record level of falsifications. Cedar’s team has studied the detailed results of 12 federal elections during Putin's reign and documented various types of violations using electoral statistics methods. This is how Russian elections transformed from being relatively fair to a complete imitation of the voting process.
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Can Russian data be trusted? A hazard map of official statistics
After the outbreak of the full-scale war in Ukraine, many academics, experts, and journalists found themselves cut off from their usual sources of information about what is happening in Russia. The country's authorities have classified dozens important statistical indicators, and those that remain publicly accessible are increasingly suspected of being unreliable. Russian official data had previously raised questions, but now statistics has become a key part of "information warfare". We have selected 30 important indicators from different areas and assessed them for manipulation.
Read the reportSocial media monitoring on the eve of the presidential elections in Russia
More than 100 thousand Russian public organizations are involved in election advertising. These mainly include schools, kindergartens, and local administrations. Public sector employees are directly campaigning to vote for Putin. At the same time, the presidential elections are not the most important topic on the agenda of state media. Here is a data-driven review of the Russian pre-elections campaign on social media.
Read the reportOur data
This section is in beta stage right now, but you can still request the data.
We will contact you and provide the access.
Elections
Election data covering all federal elections and a referendum in Russia.
- Years: 2000-2024
- Election results (number of voters, number of voting participants, results for each candidate)
- Data from more than 90,000 election commissions
Court Decisions
Database of criminal and administrative cases in Russia
- Years: 2000-2024
- Cases: 5+ million
- Court decisions, crime and sentencing descriptions and more
- Data from 2000+ court websites
Propaganda
Archive of articles from Russian pro-government media RIA Novosti.
- Years: 2001-2023
- Articles: 3.5 million
- Transcribed versions of TV broadcasts and other
At Cedar, we carefully curate our data and publish only what has value for further research. As the project develops, this section will expand, and it will become possible to explore and download raw data.
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About
After the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia has become a closed country. Researchers have lost access to their sources. But digital methods can break through the new "iron curtain." Cedar is an independent think-tank aimed at providing data-driven research about Russia to the academic and expert community. Our goal is to enable civil society and government institutions to make more informed decisions.
Contact us
If you want to request data, join the team or simple share your thoughts on the work we do — don't hesitate to leave us a message.