Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in a Friday’s telephone conversation with his U.S. counterpart Barack Obama said that Washington’s comments over Russia’s allegedly rigged parliamentary polls were inadmissible, Russian president said on Saturday.
Speaking at the meeting with the members of the ruling United Russia party, Medvedev said that on Friday he told Obama that the U.S. officials’ assessment of Russian elections “does not have any significance for us.”
On December 6, two days after Russian parliamentary elections that sparked criticism across the country over the alleged mass ballot stuffing and vote fraud in favor of the united Russia party, the U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Russia’s polls were “neither free nor fair.”
“When on the next or the second day [after the elections]… there are rebukes in the worst traditions of the Cold War, it is inadmissible. It is not a reset at all,” Medvedev said. “The Department of State is not a Russian office.”
Obama and Medvedev had a telephone conversation on Friday, Kremlin said. Obama congratulated the Russian leader on Russia’s admission to the World Trade Organization and voiced the United States’ intention to continue cooperation.
Medvedev reiterated on Saturday that Russia would act on the international political arena according to its interests, RIA Novosti reported.
“We will not allow to be intimidated,” the president said.
Speaking about nationwide protest rallies, Medvedev told the United Russia members that the protests should be carried out within the law.
“Any meetings, demonstrations are the signs of democracy and we realize it…It should happen in a strict compliance with the law,” the president said.
Protests over alleged mass electoral fraud at the December 4 parliamentary elections continued in Moscow on Saturday, as more than a thousand people attended a rally near the Kremlin.
It is the third authorized mass protest in Moscow. The next rally is scheduled for December 24 at the Sakarov Avenue. More than 25,000 people have signed up so far to a Facebook page announcing the rally.
