ESTONIA ON RUSSIA'S OSCE COMMITMENTS

C O N F I D E N T I A L TALLINN 000732 SIPDIS SIPDIS FOR EUR/RUS, EUR/NB E.O. 12958: DECL: 11/09/2017 TAGS: KDEM PREL PHUM RS EN SUBJECT: ESTONIA ON RUSSIA'S OSCE COMMITMENTS REF: SECSTATE 153309 Classified By: DCM KAREN DECKER for reasons 1.4 (b) & (d) ¶1. (C) On November 9, PolEcoff delivered reftel points to Lauri Kuusing, MFA Russia Desk Officer. Kuusing said the GOE is pleased to see that the U.S. position is in line with that of the EU. He also stated that the GOE, along with its EU partners, finds it 'unacceptable' that the Government of Russia (GOR) is trying to change established international regulations on the monitoring of elections. ¶2. (C) According to Kuusing, the GOE only received their invitation to monitor the Duma elections last week. Last September, the GOE had hoped to send five monitors to Russia, but is now hoping to be allowed to send at least one. The GOE has not yet decided who their representative will be. ¶3. (C) Kuusing also told us that the election issue was raised during a meeting on November 8 in Tallinn between Director of the Second European Division from the Russian MFA, Pavel Kuznetzov, and Simmu Tikk, Estonian MFA Director of the Third Political Department (Russia). The GOE representatives raised the question of the status of campaigns in the upcoming elections in Russia. The GOR responded that official campaigning began two days ago (November 6),but noted that since the focus is mainly on television media, the campaigns are not very visible on the street. PHILLIPS