MOSCOW (Reuters) – The head of an election monitoring group that has monitored the fairness of Russian elections in the past went on trial in Moscow on Friday, accused of cooperating with an “undesirable organisation”.
Grigory Melkonyants, co-chair of the Golos (Voice) group, said he was innocent of the charge, which is punishable by up to six years in prison.
Reporting from the courtroom, independent news outlet Mediazona, which has itself been designated a “foreign agent” by Russian authorities, said Melkonyants had called the charge against him “far-fetched and based on assumptions.”
Melkonyants was arrested in August last year, weeks before a major round of regional elections and the start of campaigning for a March presidential election which returned Vladimir Putin to the Kremlin for six more years.
Golos first angered the authorities by publicising evidence of alleged fraud in a 2011 parliamentary vote that sparked opposition protests, and then in a 2012 presidential election won by Putin. Russia has designated the organisation as a “foreign agent”, a label that carries connotations of spying.
The charge against Melkonyants relates to his alleged involvement with the European Network of Election Observation Organisations (ENEMO), a Montenegro-based NGO. The indictment states that Golos received funding from ENEMO, the U.S. State Department and other U.S. government agencies.
Golos says it has had no interaction with ENEMO since Russia banned the latter as “undesirable” in 2021.
A state prosecutor set out his case against Melkonyants on Friday.
(Reporting by Mark Trevelyan; Editing by Andrew Osborn)
