Seven additional stations will operate at Baikonur, the leased Kazakh cosmodrome that requires a special permit to enter, according to a Central Election Commission list cited by Novaya Gazeta Europe. The independent project Kovcheg published an interactive map of the locations.

The number of stations varies sharply across countries with large Russian diasporas. Kovcheg noted that Argentina will host one station; Armenia, Spain and Germany two each; Israel and the United States three each; Italy, Turkey and France four each; and Kazakhstan seven. No stations will open in Georgia.

Voters are not tied to their country of residence: they may cast a ballot at any foreign station provided they have the right to enter that country. No advance registration is required. Voters abroad will receive only one ballot, for the party-list race; voting for a single-mandate candidate is not available outside Russia.

A valid Russian foreign passport is sufficient. Diplomatic and service passports also qualify, and a person who has lost a passport may use a certificate of return to Russia. Lawyer Yevgeny Smirnov told Novaya Gazeta Europe that embassy staff have no right to refuse a ballot for lack of a visa or residence permit, since those documents are not on the list of required papers.

The main voting day is September 20. Some countries have organized early or three-day voting: Cyprus and Phuket in Thailand, for example, will vote over three days. Israel is scheduled to vote on September 17, and Bahrain, Kuwait, China, Iraq and Yemen on September 19. The Central Election Commission attributed the shifts to September 20 falling on a working day in those countries and on a major religious holiday in Israel. It recommends checking dates in advance on the website of the Russian diplomatic mission.

The most common difficulty on voting day is access to a station: with hours-long queues, some of those who arrive may not manage to cast a ballot, Smirnov noted. Independent election experts advise voting on the last possible day, when there are fewer opportunities to manipulate ballots.

A separate problem concerns online voting. The project Teplitsa of Social Technologies and The Bell found that restrictions on foreign traffic make it nearly impossible to reach the remote electronic voting platforms from abroad. Subdomains of the Moscow portal Mos.ru needed for registration failed to load in five of seven tests, and authorization succeeded only through a VPN with a Russian IP address.

The federal remote voting portal opens, but from servers in Germany neither Gosuslugi nor the ESIA identification system, through which authorization runs, responded. The mobile app DEG-2026 would not allow login under any of the tested VPNs and VPS services, including Russian ones. The websites of the Central Election Commission and regional election commissions, including those created in the occupied territories of Ukraine, were unreachable in every attempt to log in from abroad.

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the number of polling stations in Western countries had fallen by 60, which he attributed to the closure of Russian consulates. In total, he said, 326 stations will operate abroad in 152 countries, including 61 in countries Russia considers unfriendly.

In August, the Russian Foreign Ministry sent a note to the diplomatic agencies of every state with which it has diplomatic relations, asking them to prevent demonstrations outside Russian missions on election day.

Lawyer Anastasia Burakova said that visiting a Russian embassy or consulate does not in itself place a person on Russian territory: a diplomatic mission remains the territory of the host state, even though it holds diplomatic privileges and immunities. Russian staff do not gain the right to conduct operational-search activities or detain people there.

Accounts differ: Novaya Gazeta Europe, citing the Central Election Commission list, and Ekho, citing Lavrov, give different figures for the number of foreign polling stations, 319 against 326.