The EU has joined the US in saying that Vladimir Putin's party probably did not win recent elections with anything like the 50 percent of votes it claims.
The EU diplomatic service in a statement on Tuesday (6 December) said: "Reports of procedural violations, such as lack of media impartiality, lack of separation between party and state and the harassments of independent monitoring attempts, are ... of serious concern."
With thousands of anti-Putin protesters planning to mass in...
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Andrew Rettman is EUobserver's foreign editor, writing about foreign and security issues since 2005. He is Polish, but grew up in the UK, and lives in Brussels. He has also written for The Guardian, The Times of London, and Intelligence Online.