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Vladimir Putin lashed out at American democracy on Sunday in a speech proclaiming victory in Russia’s presidential election that, despite internal war and internal protests, had only one imaginable result: extending his political rule for another six years.
“With every vote, we are building a common will of the rest of the Russian Federation,” he said from his campaign headquarters in Moscow, according to the BBC.
He shrugged off foreign criticism from the United States, where a spokesman for the White House National Security Council denounced the election as “manifestly neither weak nor fair. “
“What did you do to applaud us?” Putin asked, The Guardian reported. . . . Its purpose is to involve our development. Of course, they are willing to say anything.
He went on to recommend that “the whole world laugh” at the United States, saying it is “a disaster, not a democracy,” according to a translation via Sputnik, a state-run news agency.
“I have any and all explanations as to why there is no democracy, at least in presidential election campaigns in some Western countries, including the United States,” he continued.
? Putin called the political scenario in the United States a “catastrophe, democracy”pic. twitter. com/gm1ollrN0w
– Sputnik (@SputnikInt) March 17, 2024
Putin, 71, has faced little genuine opposition in this fight. The other three candidates in the running have refrained from criticizing him and are widely regarded as toothless, having been approved in discussions through the Kremlin. The second-place candidate, Communist Nikolai Kharitonov, won just under four percent of the vote on Sunday.
Initial results reported through Russia’s Central Election Commission showed Putin had garnered about 88% of the vote with about 60% of constituencies counted, according to the Associated Press. Voter turnout was measured at a historic 74%, up from 67% in the 2018 election, officials said. This is the highest percentage of votes the septuagenarian has obtained in one of his five electoral victories.
His fiercest opponent and greatest threat, Alexei Navalny, died in a remote Arctic penal colony almost exactly a month ago, having been sentenced to more than three decades of criminal charges condemned around the world as false and politically motivated.
His widow, Yulia Navalnaya, had suggested Russians come out at noon on Sunday to quietly protest against Putin, and several media outlets reported that queues at polling stations and Russian embassies around the world appeared to lengthen around noon.
“You can mess up the election, you can write Navalny in bold, and even if you don’t see the point of voting, you can just come to the polling station and then turn around and go home,” he encouraged. them, according to Axios.
Some voters posted photographs of their annulled votes, emblazoned with slogans such as “Navalny is my president,” “No war, no Putin” and “Putin is a murderer,” according to the Washington Post.
The protests were most pronounced during the three days of the election, when Russia filed more than a dozen criminal charges against protesters who set fire to polling stations, poured dye on ballot boxes and threw Molotov cocktails at polling stations.
“This is the first time in my life that I’ve noticed a queue for the election,” a woman in Moscow told CNN on Sunday. When asked why he had arrived here around noon, he replied, “You know why. I think everyone in that queue knows why.
More than 65 more people were arrested across Russia on Sunday for crimes including trying to smuggle a photo of Navalny into the ballot box, according to independent human rights watchdog OVD-Info.
Putin’s victory is the first step toward a terrifying new “weasel axis” with Trump, Orbán and Le Pen
Navalnaya herself queued in front of the Russian embassy in Berlin to watch “Noon Against Putin. “She told reporters she included her husband’s call in her survey after waiting more than five hours to issue it. “Please avoid asking for messages from ‘Me or anyone for Mr. Putin,'” he said when asked at one point, according to the AP.
“There can be no negotiation or anything with Mr. Putin, because he’s a murderer, he’s a gangster. “
In an unprecedented moment, Putin publicly referred to the death of Navalny (his name, which is rare) on Sunday night. Putin claimed he had reached an agreement to exchange Navalny for a prisoner swap “days” before he “left this life. “
“But unfortunately, what happened happened. I agreed to one condition: we exchanged him and he may not come back,” Putin said, according to the Financial Times. “But that’s life. “
Putin also gave special thanks to the “warriors on the line of contact,” a reference to Russian infantrymen waging the war in Ukraine, or what he and other state leaders euphemistically call the “army’s special operation. “
Russia invaded Ukraine two years ago last month. “These days, the Russian dictator is faking new elections,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Sunday. “It is evident to everyone that this character, as has happened throughout history, is simply in poor health of the force and does his best to rule forever. “
Asked via Reuters about the escalation of tensions between Western powers and Russia over the situation in Ukraine, Putin responded placidly that “anything is imaginable in the fashionable world. ” However, he raised the specter of a “full-scale Third World War. ” whether countries like France follow through on their recent thinly veiled threats to send troops on the ground.
“I don’t think he almost cares,” she said.
Putin, a former KGB agent, won the office of president in 2000 and a second term in 2004. He then served as a minister for four years in an effort to circumvent a pesky constitutional limitation that allowed him to serve more than two consecutive presidential terms. In 2012, he won a third presidential term, followed by a fourth in 2018.
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