Aleksey Kochetkov
Aleksey Vladimirovich Kochetkov (; born 8 September 1971). Aleksey Kochetkov is a former engineer and political analyst well known for his closeness to official Russian policy under President Putin. He has often written in support Russia's occupation of Georgia, and also in support of pro-Moscow conspiracy theories in his book "Neo-nazis and Maidan". He is a Russian political scientist, publicist. He was the general director of Commonwealth of the Independent States - Election Monitoring Organization set up with Russian government backing as an alternative to the OSCE. from 2003 till 2013. He is the researcher and the  author of some modern methodologies of election monitoring processes and election campaigns. In 2013 he headed the Foundation for Development Civil Society Institutions "Public Diplomacy". Biography. Aleksey Kochetkov was born in 1971 in Moscow. 1989-1994 – Moscow Power Engineering Institute. In October 1993 he participated in the 1993 Russian constitutional crisis. He was arrested and during 5 months stayed in Lefortovo prison. He was released by to the State Duma political amnesty, for participants of 1993 Russian constitutional crisis on February 23, 1994. Beginning from 1996 he participated in PR projects as a PR manager throughout the country-Leningrad, Pskov , Arkhangelsk, Vologda, Kemerovo, Primorsky krai and others. He worked in the State Duma as a consultant. 1999-2002 was a head of the news agency ‘Kamenny Ostrov’ in Saint Petersburg. In 2004, he founded International Monitoring Organization CIS-EMO. CIS-EMO played a minor role as an observer during the 2004 election campaign in Ukraine around the time of the Orange Revolution. There, Kochetkov was beaten by violent supporters of the "orange revolution", a circumstance which went largely unnoticed in the Western press and even led to him being accused by certain newsagencies of having staged it In 2005, during  monitoring the Chişinău mayor elections, Kochetkov was suddenly arrested by the Information and Security Service of the Republic of Moldova , and jailed but released some days later in the absence of any formal charge. In August 2008, he was an organizer of the international Press-Center ‘Tskhinval-2008’. Later this center was given to the Ministry of Communication of the Republic of South Ossetia. In 2008, he became the chief of the Centre for Monitoring of Democratic Processes ‘Quorum’. The organization was set up as a counterweight to the OSCE. Aleksey Kochetkov was a participant of a number of international conferences , including in EUP, OSCE. As a head of the international election monitoring mission of CIS-EMO participated in more than 50 missions in countries of CIS and EU. Writings. He is the author of books and monographs like: