Putin accuses Ukraine of interfering in elections in Russia — NDTV
In Russia, an aggressor state, President Vladimir Putin said that Ukraine was allegedly deliberately obstructing negotiations to end the war and interfering in parliamentary elections in the country. He provided no evidence for his accusations.
As NDTV World reports, Putin made these statements at a meeting of the military-industrial commission. He also called Ukraine a “dictatorship,” referring to the fact that no new presidential elections were held in the country after Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s term of office ended.
Ukraine’s position on elections
Zelenskyy and other Ukrainian officials say that holding elections is impossible while the state of emergency introduced after Russia’s invasion in February 2022 remains in force. In Kyiv, the Russian vote is called “pseudo-elections,” the outcome of which, in their view, has been predetermined.
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Three-day voting
Voting in Russia’s parliamentary elections began on Friday and will last three days. Putin said it should demonstrate Russians’ support for the army fighting against Ukraine. At the same time, most candidates who opposed the war were not allowed to take part in the elections.
Putin also claimed that Ukrainian strikes on Russian targets allegedly demonstrate the insincerity of Kyiv’s proposals for negotiations. He mentioned a strike on a building in a village in the temporarily Russian-occupied part of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region, where, according to him, the head of the local election commission was killed. According to the source, this official was posthumously awarded a Russian state honor.
Separately, Putin said that Russia would continue to rely on its nuclear triad — land-, sea- and air-based means of delivering nuclear weapons — and must improve its air defense and missile defense systems. The article also notes that Ukraine has developed drone capabilities and has struck industrial facilities in Russia at distances of up to 3,000 kilometers from the border.
