Russian demand for window film designed to stop glass from shattering during drone strikes has risen 50% this year, according to manufacturer Solartek, as households across the country brace for a war that has moved closer to home just as Russia prepares to hold its first parliamentary election since launching its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
The State Duma vote, scheduled to run from September 18 through 20, will renew all 450 seats in Russia’s lower house through a mixed system that splits seats between single-member districts and nationwide party lists. Analysts widely expect the ruling United Russia party, chaired by Dmitry Medvedev and closely aligned with President Vladimir Putin, to retain its constitutional supermajority regardless of how the war is affecting public mood, in what one Western-based research group has called a largely predetermined outcome shaped by an unprecedented crackdown on independent political activity.
Even so, Kremlin officials are watching turnout and results closely as an indicator of public tolerance for the war’s costs. Weekly surveys by the state-run Public Opinion Foundation have shown more than half of respondents describing the mood among people they know as “anxious” in nearly every poll conducted since late April, with the anxiety index holding at its highest sustained level since a 2022 mobilization drive drove hundreds of thousands of men to leave the country.
The immediate driver of that anxiety is a summer of escalation. Ukraine has regularly sent hundreds of drones deep into Russian territory to strike oil refineries, military facilities and logistics warehouses in an effort to pressure Moscow toward negotiations, and Russia has answered with intensified air attacks on Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities. Yuri, a Moscow resident who gave only his first name, had shatter-resistant film installed on his apartment windows in August after a drone blast sent glass shards into a friend’s home nearby, causing minor injuries. “These are unsettled times for us right now, and I decided to protect my family,” he said.
The market response has been sharp. Oleg Khanin, head of insurance brokerage Soyuz, said demand for coverage tied to Ukrainian strikes has surged over the past year after starting from almost nothing. “Now the opposite is happening: we sit in our office, and clients from all over Russia are calling all of our phones and writing to all of our email addresses,” he said, adding that further increases in demand could eventually make the coverage impossible to obtain at all. Central bank data show household property insurance premiums rose 18% year-on-year in the first half of 2026, a jump the All-Russian Insurance Association attributed in part to more frequent drone attacks. At Solartek’s St. Petersburg workshop, manager Pavel Levit said the surge in orders for protective film has been strong enough to create shortages on the Russian market, with buyers ranging from individual homeowners to companies and state institutions.
Fear of renewed mobilization is compounding the unease. Some men have left Russia temporarily in anticipation that authorities could announce another call-up once the election has passed, despite repeated Kremlin denials that any such move is planned. Ivan, a 26-year-old engineer at a Moscow truck repair shop, and Roman, a 34-year-old construction manager, both told Reuters they had left the country with their families over mobilization fears, giving only their first names to protect their identities. No official figures exist on how many Russians may have left the country for that reason since the 2022 mobilization, when hundreds of thousands of fighting-age men departed within weeks.
Putin has publicly dismissed Ukraine’s drone campaign as an attempt to unsettle Russians and disrupt the election, saying it is doomed to fail. Reports have separately suggested that some senior officials sought to persuade Putin to postpone the vote altogether because of the drone strikes, though the Kremlin has denied any such deliberations took place. This year’s election will also be the first in which voting is organized in Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine, where 11 single-member constituencies have been created, and it comes as electronic voting — a method election-monitoring groups have called effectively unverifiable — is authorized in 33 Russian regions. No international observers will be permitted to monitor the process.
Both Russia and Ukraine deny deliberately targeting civilians in the conflict, though residential buildings, shops and transit infrastructure have been repeatedly damaged on both sides by strikes and by munitions intercepted by air defenses.
Casualty figures have continued climbing on both sides of the border this year, with deaths inside Russia rising sharply compared with earlier stages of the war, even as the vast majority of civilian deaths in the nearly five-year conflict remain concentrated in Ukraine.
