Britain and US express 'concern' over Russia election

Britain and the United States have expressed "serious concern" about the conduct of Russia's parliamentary elections, which election monitors said had stifled competition and shown a "lack of fairness".

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Several thousand people on Monday night protested in Moscow against Mr Putin and his party Photo: AFP/GETTY

By Andrew Osborn, Moscow and Alex Spillius in Bonn

6:20PM GMT 05 Dec 2011

Thousands of protesters meanwhile converged in Moscow rallying against Vladimir Putin and his United Russia party.

Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, called for an investigation into the polls, which saw United Russia party narrowly gain a majority of seats but lose nearly 15 per cent of its support from the previous election.

In remarks sure to antagonise Russia's most powerful man, she said monitors from the Organisation of Security and Cooperation in Europe had raised questions about the possible stuffing of ballot boxes, manipulation of voter lists "and other troubling practices".

She said Washington was also concerned that internal Russian election monitors were harassed, including by cyber-attacks on their websites.

"Russian voters deserve a full investigation of all credible reports of electoral fraud and manipulation and we hope in particular that then Russian authorities will take action" said Mrs Clinton, attending an international conference on Afghanistan in Bonn.READ MORE