The Russian Foreign Ministry's official spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said on Thursday that the call by the European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton on Russia to review its decision to bar liberal opposition leader Grigory Yavlinsky from taking part in the upcoming presidential elections is an attempt to cast doubt on it.
Yavlinsky, leader of the liberal Yabloko party and two-time presidential candidate, was disqualified last week after officials judged that 25.6 percent of the 2 million signatures submitted as part of his application were invalid or fake.
“I call on the responsible authorities to review as a matter of urgency the decision not to register Grigory Yavlinsky,” Ashton said during the European Parliament’s debates on Russia in Brussels.
“The EU foreign policy chief’s statement has not gone unheeded; it was, in fact, an attempt to cast doubt on the elections before the event happened,” Lukashevich said.
Earlier, Russia’s Central Election Commission (CEC) secretary slammed Ashton’s call as "interference in Russia’s home affairs."
“In my view, [Ashton's call] is disrespectful to Russia. This is interference in the country's domestic affairs and the actions of an independent body, Russia’s Central Election Commission,” CEC Secretary Nikolai Konkin said.
Yavlinsky denied the accusations of fake signatures, saying the ban was a “purely political decision” aimed at preventing Yabloko from deploying its election monitors during the March 4 vote which is widely predicted to land Prime Minister Vladimir Putin with his old job in the Kremlin.
