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Russian Senate Records External Attempts to Meddle in Presidential Election

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - Russian parliament's upper house recorded a number of attempts from other countries to prevent democratic presidential elections and will submit a report listing facts of such attempts by early May, chairman of the Federation Council International Affairs Committee Konstantin Kosachev said Sunday.
Sputnik

"I have no doubt that the election campaign in Russia was a very attractive story for our opponents worldwide, firstly, to discredit Russia in principle through its representation as an undemocratic country, as a country where free elections are impossible," Kosachev told Sputnik.

The actions of opponents were aimed at splitting the society, the lawmaker stressed.

"Secondly, of course, they aimed to weaken the current Russian authorities, so as to divide society from them," he explained.

In particular, there were attempts to finance non-systemic opposition from abroad, Kosachev said.

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"We saw how there was an attempt to support the non-systemic opposition, to present the refusal to register one of the candidates from this opposition as a plot completely undermining the democratic character of the campaign as a whole," the senator said.

There were also attempts to support a number of non-governmental organizations to prevent elections in Russia, he added.

"There were many facts, and we saw this in our commission on non-interference, which operates in the Federation Council, many facts of financing non-governmental organizations from abroad," Kosachev said.

Preliminary results of presidential elections in Russia showed the stability of the political system, and the attempts to influence the campaign from the outside resulted in the opposite outcome, Kosachev said.

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With 70 percent of the protocols processed, the incumbent Russian President Vladimir Putin wins with 75.91 percent of the vote.

"The stability of our political system is obvious: support for the Russian president is not in doubt, as the preliminary results show. In my opinion, the ones of this anti-Russian campaign have achieved exactly the opposite result, when these unseemly attempts resulted in the increase of society's consolidation around the actions of the authorities," Kosachev said.

A special commission of the Federation Council will submit a report listing facts of attempts to interfere in presidential elections in Russia by early May, Kosachev concluded.

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