Our latest report reveals how representatives from both democratic and autocratic states helped Aliyev’s regime create an image of international and domestic legitimacy around Azerbaijan’s fraudulent 2024 snap parliamentary election.

On September 1, 2024, the New Azerbaijan Party, led by President Ilham Aliyev, claimed a narrow victory in Azerbaijan’s snap parliamentary election. Although voting day itself was peaceful, the election process was far from democratic. Civil society and independent journalists faced harassment, forced emigration, and arrests throughout the campaign, while both international and domestic observers reported widespread electoral manipulation.

To create the illusion of credible international oversight, the Aliyev regime invited several hundred international observers to the election. Fewer than half of these observers met international standards for election monitoring. The others, despite clear evidence of widespread electoral manipulation, publicly endorsed the election as meeting “high standards,” lending unwarranted legitimacy to a fraudulent practice.

Key findings:

– 107 fake observers identified: Our report lists 107 individuals, including elected or appointed representatives from democratic countries who falsely validated the electoral process

– Election Commissioners as fake observers: We observed an unprecedented increase in involving election administration members in fraudulent observation efforts. We identified officials from Central Election Commissions (CEC) from ten internationally recognized states lending legitimacy to Azerbaijan’s sham elections.

– Trend of Collusion with Autocrats: This troubling trend of CEC representatives as “fake observers” extends beyond Azerbaijan. Our preliminary findings indicate similar patterns in Russia’s 2024 “Single Voting Day” (report forthcoming), highlighting an urgent need to rework the code of conduct of election commissions worldwide to prevent the discrediting of the institutions they represent.

Our report and our fake observers database provide a valuable resource for journalists, researchers, and advocacy groups seeking to understand electoral disinformation tactics, networks of malign influence, and learn more about our recommendations for democratic safeguards. 

Get in touch with Lukasz Kondraciuk, Head of Electoral Integrity at EPDE, via email: kondraciuk@european-exchange.org

EPDE identified 178 fake observers invited by the Russian authorities, including many Western politicians and elected officials, to give international legitimacy to the “presidential elections.”

On 15-17 March 2024, Russia held “presidential elections”, in which four people allegedly competed for the Russian presidential post, including none from the democratic opposition, which is outlawed in the country in violation of democratic norms and standards.  

What makes it even worse and even more detached from democratic standards is that Russia decided not to invite any OSCE (the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe) observers to monitor the “elections,” in violation of the Istanbul Document 1999, according to which OSCE participating states committed themselves to invite observers from the ODIHR (Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights) and OSCE PA, in addition to other OSCE participating states. 

In an attempt to provide a degree of international legitimacy to the “presidential election” held both in Russia and illegally in occupied Ukrainian territories, Moscow invited 1115 “international observers and experts” from 129 countries.

Our analysis of Russian and other media reports, as well as social networks such as Facebook, X/Twitter, and Telegram, allowed us to identify 178 foreign “observers” and “experts” invited by the Russian authorities to give international legitimacy to the 2024 “presidential elections” both in Russia and on Russia-occupied Ukrainian territories.

This list is part of our ongoing research and is not exhaustive. As we continue our work, additional fake observers will be added to our database at fakeobservers.org.

On 10 September 2023, Russian authorities held the annual “single voting day” across the country as well as in Ukrainian territories temporarily occupied by Russia in the period between 2014 and 2022. With the aim of providing a degree of international legitimacy to the otherwise illegitimate Russian elections in Ukrainian territories, Russian occupation forces brought a number of foreigners to perform a role of “international election observers”. EPDE identified 34 fake observers involved in the “international observation” of Russian “elections” in occupied Ukrainian territories.

For the first time in the history of any EU Member State, Orbán’s government invited dozens of friendly politicians, journalists and civil society activists whose aim was to endorse the elections. Those friendly observers – among them members of the European Parliament and of the PACE of the Council of Europe – praised the conduct of the parliamentary elections in Hungary and made clearly political statements in support of Fidesz and Orbán.

Evidence collected by EPDE through the years demonstrates that invitations to participate in politically biased international election observation missions are used by authoritarian regimes or illiberal actors as an entry door to recruit allies in key institutions. Our latest report discusses the case of a Polish political individual, Janusz Niedźwiecki, to provide a detailed account of how participation in ‘fake observation’ leads to engagement in even more malicious activities. Report available in 1. English (below) and 2. Polish.

With the gradual systemic decline of the democratic character of Russian presidential, parliamentary, and other elections, Vladimir Putin’s regime found it increasingly difficult to secure their international legitimacy. In an attempt to give the impression of international legitimation of the parliamentary elections, Russian authorities reportedly brought in 383 “international observers” and “experts” from 80 countries.

The “all-Russian voting” on President Putin’s proposed constitutional amendments, which would allow him to stay in power until 2036, was held between 25 June and 1 Jul 2020. Since the “all-Russian voting” lacked legal provisions and a constitutional status, a new legal framework was created, which, among others, did not foresee any international monitoring. However, “international experts” were invited to effectively endorse the “all-Russian voting”.

In this latest EPDE report, Anton Shekhovtsov investigates how politically biased international election observers were used by Azerbaijani authorities to relativize critical findings of the International Election Observation Mission (IEOM) to the early parliamentary elections in Azerbaijan.

In this report, Anton Shekhovtsov analyzes how the structures of “Putin’s Chef” Yevgeniy Prigozhin interfere in electoral processes in African countries with the help of fake election observation. This report focuses on the Association for Free Research and International Cooperation (AFRIC), an organization that Shekhovtsov has previously investigated and found to be involved in politically biased election observation and pro-Kremlin efforts, and is linked to Prigozhin.

In Anton Shekhovtsov’s newest study, he analyzes how the presence of “foreign observers” during the “parliamentary elections” in the so-called “Republic of South Ossetia” and of the “presidential elections” in the so-called “Republic of Abkhazia” in 2019 was underpinned not by the actual need to observe the “elections”, but rather by the intent to mimic legitimate international election monitoring in order to create an impression that South Ossetia and Abkhazia were legitimate independent states.

In Anton Shekhovtsov’s newest study, he analyzes how Russian officials invited “international experts” with known involvement in various pro-Kremlin efforts to observe the regional elections in Moscow and how they were used by officials, pro-regime media and organizations to legitimize the electoral process and neutralize the negative effect of refusing to register independent opposition candidates for the elections to the Moscow City Duma.

The booklet “Politically biased election observation—a threat to the integrity of international institutions” contains EPDE reports by Anton Shekhovtsov on politically biased election observation missions to the presidential election and the regional elections in Russia, the illegitimate presidential election in Crimea, the elections in Cambodia and Zimbabwe and the illegitimate “general elections” in the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, which all took place in 2018.

In Cambodia, parliamentary elections were held on 29 July 2018, in Zimbabwe on 30 July 2018. The “senior delegation of the international observers” (in the Cambodian case) and the AFRIC’s observation mission (in the Zimbabwean case) offered positive – and sometimes clearly politically charged – assessments of the elections in both countries, and their statements were widely disseminated by the state-controlled media to give an impression of overwhelming Western satisfaction with the conduct of the elections.

The international community considered the “General elections” in Donetsk and Lugansk as illegitimate and did not send any observers to monitor them. Aiming to fill the void of legitimacy, the “authorities” of the DPR and LPR invited dozens of “international observers” from countries such as Austria, Canada, France, Italy and Germany. None of them were transparent about the methodology they employed for observing the election processes and, therefore, violated the Code of Conduct for International Election Observers. We have identified their names and their background.

The majority of the international experts, who attended the regional elections in several Russian oblasts during the so-called single voting day, have a history of participating in various pro-Kremlin efforts. Although they were not officially accredited by Russia’s CEC as election observers, the Russian media and individual members of the CEC often referred to them as such. See the analysis of media publications on the elections and profiles of the international experts in our latest report.

Using OSINT methods we have identified 160 foreign observers who monitored the presidential election in Russia (125 observers out of 439) and Russia-annexed Crimea (35 observers out of 43). The majority of these observers are members of political parties from across the political spectrum, ranging from the far left through the centre-left and centre-right to the far right.

Reputable monitoring organisations did not send any missions to observe the Russian presidential election in Crimea held on the 18th of March 2018. Aiming to give domestic and international legitimacy to the election in Crimea, the Russian authorities invited, via a number of organisations, 43 foreign observers who obtained accreditation from the CEC and illegally travelled to Crimea to monitor the electoral process there.

Several established organisations monitored the Russian presidential election on the 18th of March 2018. However, there were around 300 electoral observers who monitored the election upon individual invitations from the State Duma and Federation Council. Preliminary research suggests that these observers can be referred to as Kremlin-friendly, as their impressions about the electoral process were positive already before the electoral process took place and fully complied with the official position of the Kremlin.

There were no official international observers at the September 10, 2017 elections, but election commissions and media reported about a group of foreigners who came to Russia with the informal status of “foreign experts.” Despite the fact that they had no official status of international/foreign observers, and, according to Russian law, could not be present in the voting premises, they were welcomed by the election commissions and allowed to spend time at the polling stations.