MOSCOW — President Vladi mir Putin on Monday accused the U.S. State Department of being behind the decision of Europe’s leading election watchdog group not to monitor Russia’s parliamentary elections Sunday.
The Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), an arm of the 56-nation Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), decided this month not to observe the Sunday elections, citing “delays and restrictions” imposed by the Russian government.
Putin described the decision as an attempt to undermine the vote’s legitimacy and warned that it could affect Russia’s already strained relations with the United States.
“According to evidence we have, this was done on the recommendation of the U.S. State Department, and we will take this into account in our intergovernmental relations with that country,” said Putin, speaking in St. Petersburg, Russia. “Actions like this will not foil elections in Russia. Their goal is to make the elections illegitimate. But they will fail again to attain this goal.”
A spokeswoman for ODIHR dismissed Putin’s charge as “nonsense.”
“The decision did not follow the recommendation or request of any government,” said Urdur Gunnarsdottir, spokeswoman for the Warsaw, Poland-based organization, in a phone interview. “It was taken by the director after consultations with elections experts. This is not a decision that had any political aim.”
Officials at first complained that Russia delayed issuing any invitation to observers, limiting the group’s ability to prepare. Russia then cut the number of observers it would allow to 70, compared with 450 long- and short-term observers at the last parliamentary election in 2003. ODIHR said it decided not to participate after Russia failed to issue visas even for a scaled-back observation mission.
Russian officials insist that they met all of their obligations as a member of the OSCE and that the dispute over issuing visas to observers was caused by ODIHR’s own failure to complete the proper paperwork.
Russian officials have long bridled at ODIHR’s role as the arbiter of the legitimacy of elections across the post-Soviet world. The organization has frequently condemned the conduct of elections, including in Russia, and officials in Moscow think ODIHR has acted as a catalyst for street protests.
