The unprecedented turnout at the presidential election held in the Russian Federation and the record number of votes for incumbent President Vladimir Putin point to widespread fraud, IPN reports with reference to gordonua.com, which cites Russian sources in emigration.
Election analyst Ivan Shukshin believes that an unprecedented 22 million votes were added for Putin, while the authors of Novaya Gazeta Europe estimated that fraud amounts to 31.6 million votes. “The scale of fraud considerably exceeds the crimes committed in 2018, when results from more than a third of polling stations in the country should have been annulled.”
In Moldova, too, the Russian authorities’ decision to open polling stations in the eastern districts of the Republic of Moldova, which are not controlled by the official Chisinau, compromised the legitimacy of the electoral exercise. By the way, against a figure of more than 200,000 citizens of the Russian Federation living in the region, the Transnistrian authorities reported a presence of only about 46,000.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Moldova strongly condemned “Russia’s unauthorized electoral activities on the sovereign territory of the Republic of Moldova in the Administrative-Territorial Units on the left bank of the Nistru”. The United States and Romania issued similar messages.
Moldova also condemned the “electoral” actions in the occupied territories of Ukraine, indicating “an evident violation of international law, including the UN Charter, and of the independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine."
In connection with Russia’s illegal actions, the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell said in Brussels that the EU will never recognize either the holding of Russian “elections” in Ukraine or their results.
For its part, Germany stated that it doesn’t consider the elections held in the Russian Federation democratic. Christiane Hoffmann, the German government’s deputy spokesperson, announced this in a briefing on March 18. The German government condemned the ballot that the Russians organized in the occupied territories of Ukraine. Neither Chancellor Olaf Scholz nor President Frank-Walter Steinmeier congratulated Putin on his new term.
The place of the world leaders was taken by Igor Dodon as the leader of an opposition party in Moldova and Yevgenia Guțul as an exponent of a group believed to be led by a legally convicted criminal.
According to official data, Putin, who ran as an independent, won 87.28% of the vote with a turnout of 77.44%. These are both record figures in the history of modern Russia.
