West responds cautiously to Russian result

RUSSIA:EUROPE AND the United States gave a guarded welcome to Russian president-elect Dmitry Medvedev yesterday, amid complaints from local and international monitors that his election was flawed, and small anti-Kremlin protests in Moscow and St Petersburg.

With almost all votes counted after Sunday's poll, Mr Medvedev had 70.2 per cent of ballots, far ahead of communist leader Gennady Zyuganov with 17.8 per cent and ultra-nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky with 9.4 per cent. The little-known Andrei Bogdanov took just 1.3 per cent of votes, and turnout was almost 70 per cent.

When his victory was confirmed on Sunday night, Mr Medvedev (42) addressed a concert on Red Square with incumbent president Vladimir Putin, and the two men vowed to work together to build a stable and prosperous Russia.

Mr Putin (55), who first worked with Mr Medvedev in St Petersburg city hall in the early 1990s, has agreed to serve as prime minister when his protege takes over in the Kremlin in May.

They also defended the legitimacy of an election that was boycotted by Europe's main democracy watchdog, which complained that Russian officials would not allow it to monitor properly a campaign in which media coverage vastly favoured Mr Medvedev.

"It is still not free and still not fair," said Andreas Gross, the head of a mission from the Council of Europe which did observe the poll.

But even without a biased media campaign and ballot-rigging violations, "the outcome of the vote, amounting in effect to a vote of confidence in the incumbent president, would have been the same", he added.

Independent Russian monitoring group Golos was more critical, and reported ballot-stuffing, false voter registration, multiple ballot-casting, police intimidation of voters and employers pressurising workers to vote for Mr Medvedev. "Russia's new political system, born in 1989, is now in a state of degradation and has been thrown back to Soviet times," said Golos election expert Andrei Buzin.

Western reaction to the election of a new leader for Russia - a vital supplier of oil and gas - was muted.

"The United States looks forward to working with him," said White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe. "It's in our mutual interest for Russia and the United States to work together on areas of common interest such as non-proliferation, counterterrorism and combating transnational crime."

European Commission president José Manuel Barroso said he hoped "under President Medvedev the Russian Federation and the European Union will consolidate and develop their strategic partnership". Germany and France said they did not consider the vote fully democratic, but joined Britain in congratulating Mr Medvedev.

French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner noted "very surprising figures, not quite worthy of Stalin, but 70 per cent is not bad". "The election was conducted Russian-style, with a victory known in advance," he added.

In St Petersburg about 2,000 people led by former chess champion Garry Kasparov protested, as did a group in central Moscow.