MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russian President Vladimir Putin was officially reappointed on Tuesday for a new six-year term during an inauguration ceremony boycotted by most Western countries who intend to express their opposition to the war in Ukraine.
In power for almost a quarter of a century, Vladimir Putin, 71, was largely and unsurprisingly re-elected president last March, garnering nearly 88% of the vote, the highest score ever achieved in a presidential election in post-Soviet Russia.
“We are a great united people and together we will overcome obstacles, we will achieve what we have planned. Together we will be victorious,” declared Vladimir Putin.
Most Western countries did not send any representatives to the ceremony punctuated by a salute of cannon fire, but Paris instructed its ambassador to Russia, Pierre Lévy, to represent France, ignoring Kyiv’s call for a boycott. .
For Ukraine, this investiture ceremony has no other purpose than the “creation of a fictitious legality entirely dedicated to maintaining the power of a man who transformed the Russian Federation into an aggressor state and the in dictatorship.
Sergei Chemezov, a close friend of Vladimir Putin, assured Reuters shortly before the ceremony that the Russian number one brought stability to the country, a quality that even his detractors should recognize in him.
“For Russia, it’s the continuation of the path, it’s stability, you can ask anyone on the street.”
“President Putin has been re-elected and we will continue our journey, even if the West probably doesn’t like it,” he continued.
(Guy Faulconbridge, French version Nicolas Delame)
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