MOSCOW, June 18. /TASS/. The United States and its NATO partners will focus their efforts on discrediting the process and results of elections to the State Duma, due in September, the chairman of the Federation Council's temporary commission for the protection of state sovereignty and prevention of interference in Russia's internal affairs, Andrei Klimov, said at a meeting of the working group for monitoring interference during preparations for and holding the elections.
"The Russian political system is firmly protected. Its legislation, including the recently passed laws, plugs many loopholes that various anti-Russian foreign centers have tried to use. Therefore it is obvious that our foreign opponents will focus their main efforts on discrediting election procedures, denying the results of the expression of popular will and creating a climate of distrust around the parliamentary elections and their results," Klimov said.
He recalled that foreign opponents had already tried to do this even without waiting for the official start of the State Duma election campaign.
Klimov stressed that the commission earlier formed a special group for gathering and analyzing information about attempts at foreign meddling in Russia's election process in 2021.
"We agreed in advance that the monitoring group will periodically inform our commission on the results of this work. The commission will make political evaluations of the collected materials and on its basis formulate conclusions and proposals within the framework of its competence," Klimov said.
"As soon as we have the monitoring group's materials, we will discuss them thoroughly in public at our regular session due on June 21," he added.
On this year's election day, Russia will be electing the State Duma, the heads of nine Russian regions (in another three regions the top executive officials will be elected by the legislative assemblies) and 39 regional legislatures.