NATO’s crusade against Russia has only boosted Vladimir Putin’s chances of securing a new term, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman has said
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova © Sputnik / Sergey Bobylev
The West itself has paved the way for Vladimir Putin’s projected historic victory in the presidential election by ensuring that NATO is perceived in Russia as a dangerous enemy, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has said.
The German Foreign Ministry called Russia’s presidential election “neither free nor fair,” adding that its “result surprises no one,” a claim echoed by the White House on Sunday. Meanwhile, UK Defence Secretary Grant Shapps accused President Vladimir Putin – who is projected to win by a landslide – of “stealing another election,” but vowed that the Russian leader “will not steal Ukraine.”
With over 95% of votes counted so far, Putin is leading the race with an estimated 87.3%, amid a record-high turnout of over 74%, according to the Central Election Commission.
Writing on Telegram on Sunday, Zakharova rebuffed Western accusations, suggesting that Berlin simply could not tolerate the display of Russian unity. Zakharova also recalled that Angela Merkel was elected Chancellor four times in a row while ex-Chancellor Helmut Kohl also stayed in power for a long time under the same paradigm.
“The Germans themselves wondered whether such authoritarian personalism was in line with the German understanding of democracy,” Zakharova wrote.
The spokeswoman noted that the only thing she could agree with Berlin about the election in Russia was that there was “nothing surprising” about its results.
In a separate post, she responded to Shapps’s comments, saying that Russia had stolen nothing, unlike the West.
“We didn’t give anything of ours to them. So they got angry. They are accustomed to taking everything away from everyone by the right of ‘exclusivity’,” Zakharova said.
