1 month ago
Western leaders denounce Putin’s 'illegitimate' election win
Western leaders have denounced what they have described as a sham Russian election, in which Vladimir Putin won a fifth term as Russian president by a landslide of about 87%, according to exit polls.
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, dismissed the result as illegitimate.
“Everyone in the world understands that this person, like many others throughout history, has become sick with power and will stop at nothing to rule forever,” he said.
“There is no evil he would not do to maintain his personal power. And no one in the world would have been safeguarded from this.”
The US national security council spokesperson, John Kirby, said: “The elections are obviously not free nor fair given how Mr Putin has imprisoned political opponents and prevented others from running against him.”
The UK’s foreign secretary, David Cameron, said the “illegal” elections featured “a lack of choice for voters and no independent OSCE monitoring”, adding: “This is not what free and fair elections look like.”
The polls have closed in Russia, following the illegal holding of elections on Ukrainian territory, a lack of choice for voters and no independent OSCE monitoring.
This is not what free and fair elections look like.
Italy’s foreign minister, Antonio Tajani, said the “elections were neither free nor fair”.
The Czech foreign minister Jan Lipavsky, meanwhile, called the election a “farce and parody”. He said: “This was the Russian presidential election that showed how this regime suppresses civil society, independent media, opposition.”
Some of Russia’s allies, on the other hand, have congratulated Putin on his victory and said they hope friendly relations between their countries continue.
Beijing congratulated the Russian president, saying “China and Russia are each other’s largest neighbours and comprehensive strategic cooperative partners in the new era”.
Foreign ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said President Xi Jinping and Putin “will continue to maintain close exchanges, lead the two countries to continue to uphold longstanding good-neighbourly friendship, deepen comprehensive strategic coordination”.
Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik said: “The Serb people welcomed with joy the victory of President Putin for they see in him a great statesman and a friend on whom we can always count and who will watch over our people.”
Venezuela’s president, Nicolas Maduro, said: “Our older brother has triumphed, which bodes well for the world”.
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Ukraine has collected pretrial information on over 128,000 victims of war crimes, Veronika Plotnikova, the head of the coordinating centre for support of victims and witnesses of the prosecutor general’s office, has said.
War crimes include acts such as deliberate attacks on civilians, attacks on cultural sites or medical institutions, torture and deportations.
She said:
The Unified Register of Pretrial Investigations has recorded information on more than 128,000 victims of war crimes, and the number is growing every day of the war.
We see our function as being a bridge between the victims and those who provide help.
We are creating an ecosystem of support because no government body, no organisation can provide for so many victims.
Here is a video of Vladimir Putin’s election victory speech, in which he vowed to prioritise what he called Russia’s “special military operation” in Ukraine.
Vladimir Putin faced no meaningful contest after the authorities barred two candidates who had voiced their opposition to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Three other politicians running in the election did not directly question Putin’s authority and their participation was meant to add an air of legitimacy to the race.
The re-election of Vladimir Putin as Russian president took place in a context of repression within civil society and the conditions for a free and democratic election were not respected, the French foreign ministry has said.
The ministry also praised in the statement the courage of “the many Russian citizens who peacefully protested against this attack on their fundamental political rights”.
Thousands of people turned up at polling stations in Russia and capitals across the world on Sunday to take part in what the anti-Kremlin opposition said was a peaceful but symbolic protest against Putin’s re-election.
In an action called “noon against Putin”, Russians who opposed the leader went to their local polling station at midday to either spoil their ballot paper or to vote for one of the three candidates standing against Putin.
The German broadcaster Deutsche Welle estimated that more than 2,000 voters turned up for the midday protest outside the Russian embassy in Berlin.
Others had vowed to write the name of late opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who died last month in an Arctic prison, on their voting slip and some visited Navalny’s grave in Moscow to symbolically cast their vote for him.
Western leaders denounce Putin’s 'illegitimate' election win
Western leaders have denounced what they have described as a sham Russian election, in which Vladimir Putin won a fifth term as Russian president by a landslide of about 87%, according to exit polls.
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, dismissed the result as illegitimate.
“Everyone in the world understands that this person, like many others throughout history, has become sick with power and will stop at nothing to rule forever,” he said.
“There is no evil he would not do to maintain his personal power. And no one in the world would have been safeguarded from this.”
The US national security council spokesperson, John Kirby, said: “The elections are obviously not free nor fair given how Mr Putin has imprisoned political opponents and prevented others from running against him.”
The UK’s foreign secretary, David Cameron, said the “illegal” elections featured “a lack of choice for voters and no independent OSCE monitoring”, adding: “This is not what free and fair elections look like.”
The polls have closed in Russia, following the illegal holding of elections on Ukrainian territory, a lack of choice for voters and no independent OSCE monitoring.
This is not what free and fair elections look like.
Italy’s foreign minister, Antonio Tajani, said the “elections were neither free nor fair”.
The Czech foreign minister Jan Lipavsky, meanwhile, called the election a “farce and parody”. He said: “This was the Russian presidential election that showed how this regime suppresses civil society, independent media, opposition.”
Some of Russia’s allies, on the other hand, have congratulated Putin on his victory and said they hope friendly relations between their countries continue.
Beijing congratulated the Russian president, saying “China and Russia are each other’s largest neighbours and comprehensive strategic cooperative partners in the new era”.
Foreign ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said President Xi Jinping and Putin “will continue to maintain close exchanges, lead the two countries to continue to uphold longstanding good-neighbourly friendship, deepen comprehensive strategic coordination”.
Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik said: “The Serb people welcomed with joy the victory of President Putin for they see in him a great statesman and a friend on whom we can always count and who will watch over our people.”
Venezuela’s president, Nicolas Maduro, said: “Our older brother has triumphed, which bodes well for the world”.
Opening summary
Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of the war in Ukraine.
Vladimir Putin claimed a landslide victory and a fifth term in Russia’s presidential election, with the Kremlin’s electoral machine boosting his share of the vote and turnout to near farcical levels.
With 99 percent of polling stations having submitted results, Putin had secured 87.33 percent of all votes cast, official election data showed Monday, according to state news agency RIA.
Western authorities have criticised Russia’s election as being neither free nor fair. Thousands pf people in Russia and around the world protested against his deepening dictatorship during the course of the election.
The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in an address on Sunday evening, said Putin had become “addicted to power”.
“This imitation of ‘elections’ has no legitimacy and cannot have any,” he said. “This person must end up in the dock in The Hague. This is what we must ensure, anyone in the world who values life and decency.”
The German foreign ministry wrote in a post on X that the “pseudo-election in Russia is neither free nor fair, the result will surprise nobody. Putin’s rule is authoritarian, he relies on censorship, repression & violence. The ‘election’ in the occupied territories of Ukraine is null and void & another breach of international law.”
The UK’s foreign secretary, David Cameron, meanwhile, criticised the vote, saying “this is not what free and fair elections look like”, while the Polish foreign ministry said that it’s “impossible to make a free, democratic choice” in the Russian election.
We will bring you more reaction to Putin’s election victory shortly. In other key developments:
The war in Ukraine was front and centre in his victory speech, as Putin claimed he was securing the border from recent raids by pro-Ukrainian military units and said that his main tasks as president would be the war in Ukraine, “strengthening defence capacity and the military”. Asked about the potential for a direct conflict with Nato, he said: “I think that everything is possible in the modern world … everyone understands that this would be one step from a full-scale third world war. I don’t think that anyone is interested in that.”
Speaking in central Moscow after early results indicated he had won Russia’s presidential election in a landslide, Putin said unnamed people made an offer to release Alexei Navalny, the late Russian opposition leader, in a swap deal with the west a few days before he died. “The person who spoke to me hadn’t finished his sentence, and I said I agree. But, unfortunately, what happened, happened,” Putin said. It was the first time the Russian president had commented on Navalny since his death, which he called a “sad event”.
The Russian embassy in the US will send Washington a diplomatic note on Monday protesting against the actions of the secret service during Russia’s presidential election on Sunday, Tass state news agency reported. Citing Russia’s ambassador to the US, Anatoly Antonov, Tass reported that secret service officers “allowed blocking the entrance to the Russian embassy and creating obstacles for Russian citizens who came to vote”.
China will consider taking part in a peace conference aimed at ending the war in Ukraine which neutral Switzerland plans to host in the coming months, the Asian country’s ambassador to Berne was quoted as saying on Monday. Wang Shihting, China’s ambassador to Switzerland, said in an interview with the Neue Zuercher Zeitung that all parties should work to end the war. The Swiss government has said it aims to hold the peace conference by this summer after the idea was floated in January.
Ukraine’s air defence systems destroyed 17 out of 22 Russia-launched drones overnight, Ukraine’s air force has said. The air force wrote on Telegram that in addition to the attack drones, Russia also launched seven missiles at Ukraine.
Ukraine reported dozens of attacks by Russia near their shared border on Sunday, with more than 60 shelling incidents in the district of Sumy in which one person was killed. Earlier on Sunday one man was killed and at least eight people were wounded in a Russian missile attack on the Black Sea port city of Mykolaiv, Ukrainian officials said.
A drone strike at a military installation in Moldova’s breakaway republic of Transnistria on Sunday destroyed a helicopter and ignited a fire, authorities in the pro-Russia region said, blaming the strike on Ukraine. However, Moldova’s Bureau for Reintegration Policies said in a statement that after examining video footage, they “do not confirm any attack” on Transnistria and called it “an attempt to cause fear and panic in the region”. It added that the military equipment destroyed in the footage, which appeared across social media, “has not worked for several years”.
