MOSCOW, April 14. /TASS/. Moscow and like-minded partners advocate for impartial election assessment criteria in countries of the Global South and East, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said.

"We consider the introduction of new, depoliticized approaches to strengthening electoral sovereignty a matter of importance. We and like-minded partners advocate for developing impartial assessment criteria for electoral processes in the countries of the Global South and East," he said in a video address at the International Scientific and Practical Conference on Ensuring Observation and Expertise of Electoral Processes at the National Center Russia.

"We see the key to success in respectful interaction with host country authorities and observance of fundamental UN Charter principles, namely sovereign equality of states and non-interference in internal affairs," the top diplomat added.

Lavrov indicated that Russia welcomes the idea of creating an Association for Monitoring Electoral Processes, an entity capable of becoming "an alternative institution for assessing elections in a multipolar world." "Such a structure must ensure independent, depoliticized observation as a counterbalance to the Western approach," he specified.

A counterbalance to non-alternative standards

The Russian foreign minister said that such initiatives are becoming "an immune reaction of the global majority to the decades-long imposition of non-alternative standards of development on countries outside the context of their national, historical, and cultural particularities.

Lavrov further noted that the activities of the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights cannot go unmentioned in the context of politicization and interference in the internal affairs of other states. He observed that the office, turned by the West into a tool of political pressure on independent states, is a practice Russia will not support in any form.