As of: February 8, 2024, 3:55 p.m
By: Tadhg Nagel
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Russia accuses the West of wanting to influence the 2024 election - including with the help of the secret services.
Is this how you want to change Russian politics?
Moscow - The Kremlin has been suspected of interfering in elections on several occasions - from the AfD to Brexit and the US elections, Russia could have had a hand in everything.
Now the country has turned the tables and accused Western countries of wanting to influence the outcome of the 2024 Russian presidential election.
Maria Zakharova, spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, makes serious allegations: The West is trying to “deprive Russian citizens living abroad of the opportunity to take part in the Russian presidential elections,” said Zakharova during a briefing on Wednesday (February 7).
As the Russian state news agency
Tass
reported
,
it is convinced that “obstacles are being deliberately set up” to “deprive Russian citizens of the right to take part in the elections.”
That is why the “opportunities this year are much smaller than in the last election campaign”.
However, Zakharova did not say exactly how she imagines this influence.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova.
© IMAGO/Alexander Shcherbak
It was only at the end of January that the Russian Foreign Ministry announced that Russian citizens who live in so-called “unfriendly” countries - i.e. those that have imposed sanctions against Moscow because of the war in Ukraine - would also be allowed to take part in the March election.
This is what Reuters
writes
.
Russia blames the West - but limits the possibilities to choose
A few days earlier, the independent Russian newspaper
The Moscow Times
published a report that spoke a different language.
Accordingly, it is Russian authorities who are taking measures to restrict the voting of their citizens living abroad.
Any Russian living abroad who wants to vote must do so at an official polling station located in a Russian embassy or consulate.
However, due to the diplomatic impact of the invasion of Ukraine, several Russian missions in Europe were closed.
In addition, the newspaper quotes Maria Zakharova, the number of polling stations abroad will be further reduced due to possible “security risks”.
So there will be fewer polling stations and, on top of that, no option to vote online.
In addition, political dissidents risked being interrogated or imprisoned if they entered Russian embassies to vote.
The Central Election Commission admitted that reducing the number of polling stations will endanger the rights of Russian citizens living abroad.
At the same time, however, she tried to justify the reduction by pointing the finger at so-called “unfriendly” countries.
Kremlin reports “attempts by Western secret services” - cooperation up to the point of treason?
Nevertheless, Russia persists in the narrative that the West wants to interfere.
Even before Zakharova's comments, Vasily Piskarev, chairman of the State Duma's Security and Anti-Corruption Committee, had claimed that Western secret services were urging Russian citizens to download "supposedly untraceable" voting apps and "sign petitions to recognize the election as illegitimate." , and to be trained as observers in the polling stations”.
According to
Tass
, the chairman of the Security Committee said the commission had registered “attempts by Western intelligence services” to “illegally collect personal data of Russian citizens.”
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According to Piskarev, such actions are aimed not only at gross interference in the Russian elections, but also at "inducing citizens into confidential cooperation (treason) with all the ensuing legal consequences," he warned.
Graduates of US educational programs as a “fifth column” - influencing Putin's election campaign?
The head of the Russian foreign secret service SVR, Sergei Naryshkin, also claimed in mid-January that the USA was planning to interfere in Vladimir Putin's election campaign, as the British newspaper
The Guardian
reported.
Naryshkin feared that Russian graduates of U.S. education programs - Fulbright, summer work travel, high school flex and other exchange programs - could be mobilized as a potential "fifth column," the newspaper said at the time.
It is "obvious that on the eve of the presidential elections in Russia, the Americans are using the smallest opportunity to 'shake up' the domestic political situation in our country," said Naryshkin.
However, according to the
Guardian,
observers see this as more of a "spy mania" by the security services - after all, numerous academics and other researchers connected to foreign governments are involved in espionage investigations.
Naryshkin's comments come after the number of treason cases in Russia exploded in 2023.
The independent legal NGO
First Department
told the newspaper that this trend was primarily due to the war in Ukraine and the desire of the security services to show that they were successfully carrying out their counterintelligence task.
(
tpn
)