A statement from the U.S. foreign ministry claimed that the U.S. regrets that restrictions imposed by the Russian authorities as part of the fight against the coronavirus will not allow the OSCE to send observers to the vote
Russian Ambassador to Washington Anatoly Antonov on Friday criticised the US foreign ministry’s statement regarding the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) monitoring of the upcoming State Duma elections, TASS reported.
“The statement of the State Department, to put it mildly, is bewildering. There is a feeling that the official representative of the department is not fully aware of the situation. Russia was ready to receive a team of observers from the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (DIHR) at least as large as the one it sent to the 2020 US presidential election. Refusal to send experts is solely the choice of the DIHR”, – Antonov said on Facebook of the Russian diplomatic mission.
The diplomat also stressed that “independent and credible monitoring of the voting process should not be tied to the number of observers.”
“I would like the US side to be equally sensitive about the electoral processes in the US”, – the Russian ambassador added.
The OSCE’s decision that it would not be able to send a mission “due to restrictions imposed by the Russian authorities on election observation” was made public on Wednesday. Matteo Mecacci, head of the DIHR, said it was important for the organisation “to be able to determine the necessary number of observers independently”. CEC Chairwoman Ella Pamfilova deeply regretted the ODIHR’s decision and stressed Russia’s interest in international observation. She hoped that the decision can be reviewed taking into account the ODIHR’s experience of monitoring in the format of limited and special missions, taking into account sanitary and epidemiological conditions.