On Tuesday in Strasbourg, at a press conference organised alongside the plenary session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, Russian opponent Vladimir Kara-Murza called on the Assembly not to validate, in January, the authority of the Russian delegation resulting from the September parliamentary elections in Russia.
This Duma delegation will be “fraudulent”, he said.
The elections were described as ”stolen” by other participants at the press conference, which was organised by Emmanuelis Zingeris, head of the Lithuanian delegation to the Assembly.
Coming under particular criticism were the elections in the Crimea, which has been annexed by Moscow, and the removal by Google and Apple of an application that encouraged voting for candidates who were most likely to beat those candidates put forward by the Kremlin.
As Jacques Maire (France) noted on Monday, the Assembly did not carry out an electoral observation mission during these legislative elections since an agreement could not be reached due the pandemic regarding the presence of OSCE and ODIHR observers. It therefore carried out a simple appraisal mission on the political situation in Russia.
Nevertheless, Jacques Maire added that despite good cooperation with the authorities, the “very serious concerns” that have arisen “will be the subject of a follow-up report to be communicated to the Bureau of the Assembly”. (Original version in French by Véronique Leblanc)