DISINFO: European Parliament must have a crystal ball: it called beforehand not to recognise Duma election
SUMMARY
Without even waiting for the date to arrive, the European Parliament called on the EU authorities to not recognise the Duma election in Russia. They must have a crystal ball, it is surprising that they were already saying that the election is fraudulent when it had not even taken place yet. A Spanish observer on the ground refuted the spectre of fraud and witnessed that there was much more freedom of expression during the campaign than in most Western democracies.
RESPONSE
The claims in the article are false. The authors of the report presented to the European Parliament stated that the EU should be prepared to not recognise the Russian Duma only “in case the parliamentary elections are recognised as fraudulent”.
In fact, at the point of its release, there were clear indicators that the Duma election was going to be problematic and not fully democratic, including labelling opposition parties as “extremists”, pressure on tech giants to remove an opposition-promoted app, or the use of questionable techniques to prevent the election of independent candidates. Particularly concerning was the persecution of independent media, which led to the closure of dozens of outlets after being officially declared “foreign agents” or “undesirable organisations” in the weeks prior to the Duma election.
In 2021, Russia ranked 150 out of 180 countries in the Press Freedom Index compiled by Reporters Without Borders, well behind all Western democracies.
See other examples of similar disinformation narratives in our database, such as claims that the West is preparing provocations to discredit elections in Russia, that there is a lot of disinformation circulating in the West about the Duma elections, that Russian-speaking citizens will be used to discredit the election, or that there is democracy in Russia since there are a lot of participants in this electoral process.
This disinformation message appeared in the same article as the claim that “Western criticism on the Duma election is part of a hybrid war against Russia”.