MOSCOW, December 12. /TASS/. Russia will face increasing pressure as its presidential election draws near, the Independent Public Monitoring association said in a report.

"The election became the target of a major defamatory attack even before the election campaign began," the report reads.

According to the association, external forces behind attacks on the election don’t even bother to hide their intentions as "the vote and its outcome have already been declared illegitimate." "In fact, the delegitimization of the election has been woven into the script of the collective West’s information war against Russia. Today, we can see a public campaign aimed at declaring the Russian presidential election invalid, which is run by Western countries," the report says.

The authors of the report believe that "external pressure on Russian citizens and the country’s electoral system will only grown" in the future. "Russia’s civil society can make an important contribution to countering this information aggression, with public organizations and experts pooling their efforts to present and objective and reliable assessment of the course of the election campaign," the association pointed out.

Russia’s presidential election will take place over three days, from March 15-17, 2024.