The head of Russia’s last independent election-monitoring campaign group has been arrested, as the Kremlin carries out a major crackdown on democratic bodies.
“Grigory Melkonyants, co-chairman of the ‘Golos’ movement, has been detained and is being questioned by the Investigative Committee as a suspect,” the Russian vote-monitoring group Golos announced Thursday. Melkonyants’ home was searched Thursday morning and he was then detained.
The crackdown has not only targeted Melkonyants but also “14 of his associates in eight regions, including Moscow, Kazan and St. Petersburg,” Russian state newswire RIA Novosti said, citing an anonymous source.
According to the AP, which spoke with Melkonyants’ lawyer, the watchdog chief will appear in Moscow’s Basmanny District Court on Friday. He faces a maximum sentence of six years in prison for working with what Russia branded “undesirable” international organizations.
According to Melkonyants’ lawyer, he is accused of working with the European Network of Election Monitoring Organizations (ENEMO), though German media reported that Golos co-chair Stanislaw Andrejtschu said the group hasn’t worked with ENEMO for two years. Golos operates in 40 Russian regions and has monitored election fraud in past elections.
“We see this as a form of political pressure and an attempt to stifle our activities in Russia,” David Kankiya, governing council member of Golos, said.
Golos, which has operated since 2000, detailed election fraud in Russia’s 2011 elections, which triggered opposition protests. In 2013, the watchdog was classified by Russia’s Ministry of Justice for the first time as a “foreign agent” and subsequently changed its status from NGO to an unregistered civil movement.
Since President Vladimir Putin launched Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the Kremlin has stepped up its attacks on civil society and free media. This week, POLITICO reporter Eva Hartog was expelled from Russia after 10 years of reporting there, as was Anna-Lena Laurén, a correspondent for Scandinavian media outlets.
