An article in Tuesday's edition of Russian business newspaper Kommersant claims a list of possible observers presented to Russia's Central Election Commission includes several members of the OSCE said to have openly supported the so-called Orange Coalitio
Kommersant also says observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe may boycott the country's upcoming presidential elections. Russia has offered to ease restrictions on Europe's main election watchdog by increasing the number of observers and the time they can spend monitoring the vote. RT political commentator Peter Lavelle has not ruled out the possibility of the OSCE boycotting the election. He says despite all the good work it does all over the world, the organisation shows bias in election monitoring: “In Russia's view the OSCE is lecturing it and telling it how it should be running its elections. Russians looking at the OSCE in the past – in Georgia and Ukraine – are very dubious about it. They say the OSCE is a biased organisation at times. I’ve met election observers and they were openly biased in their opinions, especially in Georgia and Ukraine”.