US, UK, most EU nations to boycott Putin inauguration
Al Jazeera
Russia’s Vladimir Putin will be sworn in for a fifth term as president in a ceremony at the Kremlin later on Tuesday.
The United States and most European Union nations have said they will not send envoys to Tuesday’s inauguration of Vladimir Putin as Russian president.
Putin, 71, secured a fifth term in office in a March election that critics said lacked democratic legitimacy.
He gained 87.28 percent of the vote, weeks after the sudden death of his most vocal critic, Alexey Navalny, in an Arctic prison.
“We will not have a representative at his inauguration,” US State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller told reporters. “We certainly did not consider that election free and fair but he is the president of Russia and he is going to continue in that capacity.”
The United Kingdom and Canada said they would not send anyone to the ceremony, while a spokesperson for the European Union told the Reuters news agency the bloc’s ambassador to Russia would not attend the inauguration, in keeping with the position of most of the EU’s member states.
