RIA NOVOSTI 5 December 2011 Despite the lack of a level playing field, Russian voters made use of their right to express their choice in parliamentary elections, observers from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) said on Monday. The governing United Russia party won 238 of 450 seats in Sunday's elections to the State Duma, the lower house of parliament, a significant drop compared to the 315 seats it won in the 2007

Wall Street Journal 2 December 2011 MOSCOW – Russian prosecutors accused the country's largest independent election-monitoring group of violating election laws, days before a parliamentary vote in which observers and opposition groups forecast widespread fraud. The move comes as the Kremlin battles voter apathy and indications that the lofty personal appeal of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is beginning to wane. The main pro-Kremlin political

Spencer Oliver, Petros Efthymiou and Grigory Melkoniants, Regional Network Manager of GOLOS. MOSCOW, 1 December 2011 – OSCE Parliamentary Assembly President Petros Efthymiou, appointed by the OSCE Chairman-in-Office, Lithuanian Foreign Minister Audronius Azubalis, to lead the short-term observers for the Russian elections on 4 December, arrived in Moscow with the team of experts on Monday as final preparations for the 2011 Election Observation

Washington Post 30 November 2011 By Associated Press MOSCOW — Alexei Balitsky, a student at Russia's top engineering school, is among hundreds of people across the country who have complained of pressure to vote for the Kremlin's party in this weekend's parliamentary elections. The independent election watchdog group Golos said Wednesday that about a third of the 4,000 complaints of violations it has received so far come from voters who say

COPENHAGEN, 25 November 2011 – OSCE Parliamentary Assembly leaders today expressed deep disappointment with yesterday's ruling in the case of Ales Bialiatski, leader of the Belarusian human rights organization Viasna. On 24 November, the Pervomaiski District Court of Minsk sentenced Bialiatski to four and a half years in prison, confiscation of property and a fine for "concealment of profits on an especially large scale in pursuance of prior

Matteo Mecacci at the OSCE Human Dimension Committee meeting, 14 November 2011. VIENNA, 15 November 2011 – In a continuation of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly's efforts to forge closer co-operation with the OSCE's governmental side in Vienna, Matteo Mecacci, chair of the OSCE PA's Committee on Democracy, Human Rights and Humanitarian Questions, met with his counterpart committee Monday and outlined several ways the upcoming Ministerial Council