Western observers on Monday condemned Russia’s parliamentary elections as ”not fair”, tainting a poll that gave President Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party a landslide win of more than 64 per cent of the vote amid reports of widespread vote manipulation.

Observers from the OSCE and the Council of Europe said the poll had failed to meet standards for democratic elections. They said that ”frequent abuse of administrative resources, media coverage strongly in favour of the ruling party and an election code whose cumulative effect hindered political pluralism” had marred the election, which has been turned into a referendum on Mr Putin’s rule.