Almost 700 international observers will arrive in Russia to monitor the March 4 presidential elections, Russia’s Central Electoral Commission chief Vladimir Churov said on Thursday.
“Currently, 667 international observers are accredited. Of them 219 are from the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, 231 – from the CIS mission, 44 – from the CIS Council International Assembly, 37 – from the EU Council Parliamentary Assembly, and 8 from the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly,” Churov said.
A group of 29 officials from the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) will arrive in Moscow on Thursday to monitor the poll.
Members of the PACE monitoring mission, headed by Dutch leftist politician Tiny Kox, are expected to meet with presidential candidates and election authorities in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kazan, Nizhny Novgorod, Arkhangelsk and Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsk prior to the elections.
Five candidates – Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov, nationalist LDPR party head Vladimir Zhirinovsky, A Just Russia party leader Sergei Mironov and billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov – will compete for Russia’s presidency in the March 4 vote.
