Author: Vojtech Berger, HlidaciPes.org, Czech Republic
The Russian presidential elections were again held without independent international observers. However, Russia – as it has done many times in the past – invited other foreign “experts” to testify to the regularity of the vote, despite reported incidents from polling stations. In the past, some Czech politicians have also lent themselves. This time, for example, envoys from Slovakia served Russian propaganda.
“The whole of Europe should learn from Russia how to do elections,” Slovak Matúš Alexa commented on the voting process for several Russian media. He was monitoring the presidential election in the annexed Crimea.
In Slovakia, Alexa runs the Brat za brata motorcycle association, which has seamlessly built on the previously much more active Night Wolves club sympathetic to Vladimir Putin’s regime. Alexa also used to go on memorial rides with the Night Wolves.
The members of Brat za brata are, as they say, dedicated to the preservation of historical memory in Slovakia and the Czech Republic. In practice, this means visiting memorials to the victims of World War II and, in particular, continually extolling the merits of the Red Army and Russia – both historical and contemporary.
However, the officially purely historical focus did not prevent the bikers from supporting this year’s anti-government protests of some Czech farmers, with obviously no connection to history. The Facebook community of the Brat za brata association is already approaching a hundred thousand supporters from the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
“Expert from a village under the Tatras”
Alexa is not politically active in Slovakia, but his association apparently has good relations with the Russian embassy there. He has also travelled to Russia several times recently. For example, in January this year he was part of a Czech-Slovak “delegation”, consisting mainly of fans of motorcycle clubs, which travelled to Moscow and St. Petersburg for a few days. According to one of the participants, it was “at the invitation of the Russian Ministry of Culture”.
At the same time, Alexa boasted on social media about a photo of him presenting a wooden souvenir to Mikhail Shvydkoy, the Russian Federation’s special ambassador for international cultural cooperation. Shvydkoy, by the way, also coordinated the 2018 Czech-Russian Discussion Forum in Prague during the mandate of then-President of the Czech Republic Miloš Zeman.
Alexa is no great orator, and in the promotional videos he shares either on his social media or disseminated by Russian official media, he usually speaks in simple Russian and repeats the same phrases over and over again. Yet last year, he was invited to an international cultural forum in St. Petersburg, Russia, where he was one of the panelists. At another point, President Vladimir Putin spoke at the same event.
At the St Petersburg event, Alexa, who comes from the small village of Vernár near Poprad city in northern Slovakia, was described by the organisers as “a public figure and founder of the Slovak Motorcyclists’ Civic Association”.
Now, less than half a year later, during his celebratory remarks about the election process in Crimea, the Russian media, somewhat surprisingly, are already referring to the biker as “the BRICS president for European cultural cooperation” (The BRICS acronym stands for the economic grouping of Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates).
Suit instead of jacket
It is not clear where Matthew Alexa came by this title or what exactly it entails. However, he has swapped his biker’s black jacket for a suit, and in Russian news such a title, with its “expert” accent, apparently works better than “biker”. Along with him in the Crimea delegation, other guests from Ghana, Serbia and India watched the elections. Ján Brňák, another member of Brat za brata, came from Slovakia as an observer.
Since 2021, Russia has not allowed genuine foreign election observers to vote on its territory (or on territories it has annexed).
The Kremlin relies all the more heavily on hundreds of invited pseudo-observers from abroad, who always say what needs to be said: the elections were conducted in a regular manner, we did not see any violations of the rules.
Ten years ago, even members of the Czech parliament did not mind such trips. Stanislav Berkovec from ANO Party or Milan Šarapatka from Úsvit Party went to “supervise” the controversial referendum after the Russian annexation of Crimea.
In 2022, two “observers” with ties to Czech communists also assisted in the referendums in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, also occupied by Russia, on the question of joining the Russian Federation.
No expert mission, just impressions
Yet there is a fundamental difference between an official election observation mission and the above-described trips of foreign guests invited by Russia.
While the monitoring mission observes the election venue over a long period of time – weeks, even after the elections themselves, the foreign guests come for a few days only. As a rule, they see only a very narrow slice of the reality of the voting process itself, and moreover, this is not a methodologically based work, but rather a capture of subjective impressions. Given the potential conflict of interest, a serious monitoring mission should also not accept any financial or other benefits from the country where the elections are taking place.
In the case of the Czech-Slovak motorcyclists, this can be successfully doubted, given that they themselves boast about the aforementioned invitation from the Russian authorities. Not to mention the fact that they are no experts in election monitoring.
This year, as in the past, the Kremlin has tried to lure foreign “observers” mainly to those places where it expected the most receptive reaction, such as some Western European political parties that have long maintained contacts with Russia.
This also applies to the German AfD. Three members of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) from the Bavarian state parliament went on a self-proclaimed observation mission to Russia. Despite the fact that the trip was criticised by the AfD’s state and national leadership.
The trip was organised by Russia, but the German participants said they paid their own expenses to avoid criticism over possible bias. However, the outcome was similar to that of the aforementioned Slovak and other “foreign expert observers” in Crimea. That is, by praising Russia.
Elena Roon, a member of the German delegation, observed the elections in Vladivostok. She said that she was “positively surprised” that people were already voting there at eight o’clock in the morning. She concluded for Russian television that this was a “very important election” for the public.
