The German government and the European Union have heavily criticized the parliamentary elections in Russia.
The spokesman for EU foreign affairs representative Josep Borrell, Peter Stano, accused Moscow of “an atmosphere of intimidation for all critical, independent voices”.
He also criticized the fact that there were no international election observers during the election.
The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe did not send election observers to Russia - as is usually the case - because of restrictions imposed by Russian authorities.
Stano said it had noted independent and reputable reports of serious violations during the election.
In the run-up, opposition politicians, media, journalists and civil society organizations were also increasingly attacked.
All of this had the aim of silencing the critical opposition and making real competition impossible.
The spokesman for the German government, Steffen Seibert, said there were “very serious indications from Russian opposition politicians and also from election observers” about “massive irregularities”.
You have to take that seriously.
"Really not believable"
According to the authorities, the ruling party of President Vladimir Putin was expected to win the parliamentary election, which was overshadowed by allegations of fraud. The party also announced on Monday that it had also defended the two-thirds majority, which is important for constitutional changes. United Russia's general secretary Andrei Turchak said his party won at least 315 of the 450 seats. According to Turchak, she won 195 of the 225 direct seats available for election as well as 120 seats on the party list. He spoke of a "clear and clean" victory. He pointed out that his party had also won in the 39 regions where regional parliaments were elected. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov affirmed the "competition, openness and honesty of the elections".
Even state polling institutes had only seen Putin's party at around 30 percent before the election. The preliminary election results are "really not credible," said the spokeswoman for the imprisoned Kremlin critic Alexej Navalnyj, Kira Jarmisch. She is reminded of 2011 when Putin “stole” the election. "The same thing is happening now." The deputy head of the Communist Party of Russia, Dmitri Novikov, said on Monday: "We do not recognize the results of the electronic voting in Moscow." The results of the electronic voting were only published in the Russian capital on Monday afternoon. In other regions, they were available just a few hours after the polling stations closed on Sunday.
The election observation organization Golos spoke of a clearly verifiable fraud. She asked the electoral commission to cancel the results. The Golos expert Roman Udot announced on Facebook that 78,000 more ballot papers were shown for online voting than were given to eligible voters. A curve clearly shows that towards the end of the vote on Sunday the number of votes cast clearly exceeded the number of registered votes. “If there is one more ballot paper in a ballot box than is legally issued, then all ballot papers will be declared invalid. And what if there are 78,000? ”Said Udot.
In the electoral districts of the capital, the majority of candidates from parties other than the Kremlin United Russia had won the hand-counting of the ballot papers. After the results of the electronic voting, which was organized in this way for the first time, were published, all of a sudden the Kremlin party candidates were in the lead. After the 2011 election, there were massive protests in Moscow. Navalnyj was one of the leaders at the time. The Kremlin critic is now in camp detention, and numerous confidants live abroad or are under arrest.