The Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) accused the United States on Monday (11) of trying to interfere in the Eurasian country's presidential elections, which will be held between Friday (15) and Sunday (17).
“According to information received by the Foreign Intelligence Service of the Russian Federation, the Joe Biden government is establishing work with American NGOs to reduce voter turnout,” the SVR said in a statement, according to Russian press reports.
According to the note, the intelligence service also accused the United States of hiring “leading American IT experts” to “carry out cyber attacks on the remote electronic voting system, which will make it impossible to count the votes of a significant proportion of the voters.” Russian voters.”
The White House has not yet commented on the accusations.
In June last year, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov had already accused the United States of planning actions to interfere in the Russian elections.
“The forms of such interference are very varied, including threats, blackmail and the organization of 'color revolutions',” Lavrov said, in a reference to the 2004 Orange Revolution in Ukraine.
Russia's presidential election will basically be a formality for President Vladimir Putin to remain in the Kremlin until 2030. Several opponents were vetoed and only three front candidates remained to “challenge” the current president.
Additionally, independent observation of the election will be restricted. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), which has monitored ten Russian national elections in recent decades, said in January it would not send observers due to the “deterioration” of “conditions” in Russian democracy. .
In August last year, in a gesture of intimidation, Russian authorities arrested Grigory Melkonyants, leader of Golos, Russia's only independent election observation group.
Golos pointed to signs of fraud in the 2012 presidential election and in 2013 was classified as a “foreign agent” by the Russian government.
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