Scholz won’t congratulate Putin on election victory – Berlin

Moscow has branded the West’s criticisms of the Russian presidential elections as both predictable and irrelevant

The Chancellor of Germany Olaf Scholz will not send a message of congratulations to Russian President Vladimir Putin on his re-election victory, which Berlin has branded as “undemocratic,” government spokeswoman Christiane Hoffmann told a media briefing on Monday.

Putin won the ballot by a wide margin, receiving 87% of the votes, according to the Russian Central Election Commission. This year’s vote also saw the highest turnout in Russia’s modern history, which surpassed 74%.

Hoffmann claimed that the vote was not democratic and “no real opposing candidates were allowed.” She went so far as to brand Russia a “dictatorship” ruled “in an authoritarian manner” by Putin, and added that Scholz shares such an assessment.

Russia’s election saw four candidates present on the ballot. Apart from Putin, who ran as an independent with support from three political parties, all other candidates were nominated by major parliamentary opposition parties: the left-wing Communist Party of Russia, the right-wing Liberal Democratic Party (LDPR) and the New People Party, which entered the State Duma in 2021.

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Putin brushes off Western election rebukes

Berlin decried an alleged “climate of intimidation” and a lack of “freedom of expression” in Russia, as it justified Scholz’s decision not to congratulate Putin on his landslidevictory.

“We see this so-called election in Russia last weekend as neither free nor fair,” Hoffmann said, in a statement that was similar to one earlier offered by the US.

She called it “extremely problematic” that votes were also held in the four former Ukrainian territories – the two Donbass republics as well the Kherson and Zaporozhye Regions – which joined Russia following a series of referendums in autumn 2022 that Kiev and its Western backers have not recognized.

The Russian national election of 2024 prompted a flurry of critical statements in the West, which were dismissed by Moscow as expected but irrelevant. “This is not an opinion for us to heed,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists on Monday, referring to remarks made by Washington and other Western nations.

Earlier, Putin himself responded to Western criticism of the election results, calling them “predictable,” considering that those nations “are fighting against us, including with arms,” referring to the West’s constant stream of weapons deliveries to Ukraine.

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