Alleged observers of Russian “referendums” in Ukraine violate rules

The foreigners, which the state media russian routinely cite as international observers of so-called referendums in four regions of the Ukraine are violating several international principles of election observation and are engaged in nothing more than “political activism,” experts in the field told CNN .

“What they do is not election observation,” Anton Shekhovtsov, who writes reports on false election observation for the European Platform for Democratic Elections (EPDE), an NGO backed by Germany and the European Union, pointed out Tuesday. .

“It is a political activity that is only disguised as election observation.”

Russian state news agency TASS last week cited the remarks of what it calls “international observers” as proof that the so-called referendums held in the occupied parts of Ukraine’s Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions are free and fair.

“Being here, I can see with my own eyes that people are voting voluntarily,” said a German energy executive, Stefan Schnaller, according to TASS, in an article published Saturday.

Schnaller was talking about the vote in the Zaporizhzhia region of Ukraine.

The EPDE, which promotes best practices for conducting elections and monitoring elections, states that a monitor should never use only his or her individual experience to judge the progress of an entire election.

“Observers cannot adequately assess elections when they are not members of a long-term observation mission and when they make public statements based only on their own limited observation,” the EPDE explained.

Schaller was fired “with immediate effect” on Monday — two days after the TASS article was published — by his employer, the German energy company Energie Waldeck-Frankenberg (EWF).

In a statement, the EWF found that Schnaller’s behavior “clearly violates the company’s worldview, moral values ​​and philosophy.”