At the OSCE Permanent Council in Vienna on January 13 Russian delegation slammed OSCE’s election observation stating that its “methodology in election monitoring and its ambition to play the role of a supra-national arbiter were examples of political hypocrisy.”
Observers say Russia proposes to significantly weaken OSCE’s democratization branch – Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) and asks for increasing the number of CIS and Russia representatives in election monitoring missions.