The spokesman for the Russian presidency (Kremlin), Dimitri Peskov, assured this Monday that the president, Vladimir Putin, has the “absolute support” of Russian society and no one will be able to defeat him if he decides to run for a new term.
“The president has not yet announced whether he will present his candidacy. If the president confirms his candidacy, obviously no one in our country will be able to, in fact, compete against the president at this stage,” Peskov told the Russian news agency. Interfax, adding that he sees the upcoming elections as a “great opportunity.”
The Kremlin spokesman’s statement came a day after Russian regional elections, which Putin’s United Russia party won with a large majority, especially in annexed Ukrainian regions.
The results of these elections “very clearly confirm the absolute consolidation of society around the direction of the country (…) The level of support received by the current regional leaders indicates that the President also enjoys that support,” Peskov concluded. .
The electoral commissions imposed by Moscow in Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhia and Kherson, in a vote aimed at politically legitimizing the annexation, indicated that five parties with representation in the Russian parliament presented candidates for the local assemblies, highlighting Putin’s party according to the elections. preliminaries. results.
In Zaporizhia, the Kremlin party won 83.96% of the vote, with around 60% of the votes counted. In Kherson, United Russia came close to 87% of the vote, while in Donetsk it led with 79.56%.
In Luhansk, the only region in eastern Ukraine that Russia almost completely controls, United Russia won 74.72%, with almost 54% of the votes counted.
The central electoral commission assured that the participation rate in the four annexed provinces was higher than in other Russian territories, reaching more than 74% of registered voters.
The United States and Ukraine warned that the results of these “elections” were prefabricated and, like most Western countries and allies (Canada and Japan), the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and the Council of Europe , assured that they will not recognize these “illegal” elections.
The Russian military offensive on Ukrainian territory, launched on February 24 of last year, plunged Europe into what is considered the most serious security crisis since the Second World War (1939-1945).
Ukraine’s Western allies have supplied weapons to kyiv and passed successive sanctions packages against Russian interests to try to diminish Moscow’s ability to finance the war effort.
Source: TSF
