The non-alternative elections of the President of the Russian Federation cannot be considered as legitimate. This was stated by the head of Kyiv city organization of UKROP, Chairman of the Board of “Maidan of Foreign Affairs” Fund Bohdan Yaremenko on the air of Hromadske radio.
“Russian elections are illegitimate not only because they take place in the Crimea, but also because they were not in compliance with the minimum standards of competition, alternative,” said Bohdan Yaremenko.
According to him, we cannot seriously talk about a political alternative in a totalitarian country, and, accordingly, we should not be surprised at the high level of support of Vladimir Putin in the elections.
“They had good experience in 2014 during the so-called ‘referendums’, so they can draw any figure to please ‘great, terrible and powerful’ Vladimir,” said the UKROP member.
According to Bohdan Yaremenko, the Russian authorities adhere to the lawfulness of the elections only formally. One of the main opposition candidates (Alexey Navalny) was not allowed to participate in the campaign.
Instead, people who were not engaged in politics and declared their anti-Putin position only before the start of the race were included to the list of candidates.
This concerns, for example, a journalist Ksenia Sobchak, who has some family ties with Vladimir Putin. Technical candidates give the appearance of freedom and serve as clowns for the public. The communists or Vladimir Zhirinovsky (or the “Liberal Democrats” led by Zhirinovsky) are actually finance by the authorities in order to show 25% of those who disagree.
“Zhirinovtsi” or communists can afford to criticize Putin on talk shows, but when it comes to voting on important issues, they are all organized and pressing the button “for” together with the pro-government parties,” stressed Bohdan Yaremenko.
At the same time, he urged the Ukrainian politicians and journalists to pay less attention to the pseudo-elections in the occupied Crimea.
“It seems to me that for the Ukrainian media, for Ukrainian political experts and politicians it is a sin or a very non-patriotic and apolitical act to seriously talk about the plebiscite in the Crimea, while it is not Ukrainian,” said the UKROP member.
