MOSCOW, September 20. /TASS/. Washington seems annoyed at failed attempts to influence the political situation in Russia, Chairman of the Russian State Duma (lower house) Foreign Affairs Committee Leonid Slutsky told reporters, commenting on the US Department of State's assessment of Russia's parliamentary elections.

US Department of State Spokesperson Ned Price claimed earlier that "the September 17-19 Duma elections in the Russian Federation took place under conditions not conducive to free and fair proceedings."

"Such an assessment borders on interference and points to annoyance at the fact that the collective West's attempts to influence the political situation in Russia were firmly thwarted. It's not for Washington to lecture others on how to conduct democratic elections, regret the absence of observers and speculate about respect for the rights of voters," Slutsky stressed.

The lawmaker emphasized that "Russian voters were provided with a wide range of opportunities to participate in the vote, even amid coronavirus restrictions." At the same time, "no one is challenging the elections' outcome, no one is trying to storm the State Duma building in protest against the results of the parliamentary campaign." "Perhaps, there is something that the US could learn from Russia," Slutsky said.

When commenting on criticism related to the absence of observers representing the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE ODIHR), the committee chairman noted that the quota the OSCE monitoring bodies had received from Russia "was nearly twice as much as the number of its observers in the last US elections." However, observers chose not to travel to Russia, though "observer groups from almost 60 countries monitored developments at Russian polling stations and came to the conclusion that the election was fully in line with democratic rules," Slutsky concluded.