Russian President Vladimir Putin in his election victory speech said Russia would not be “intimidated” as he became one of the longest-serving Russian leaders in more than 200 years.
“I want to thank all of you and all citizens of the country for your support and this trust. No matter who or how much they want to intimidate us, no matter who or how much they want to suppress us, our will, our consciousness — no one has ever succeeded in anything like this in history. It has not worked now and will not work in the future. Never,” Putin said early Monday morning, according to a report by news agency AFP.
Putin also said there are risks of World War III if a conflict breaks out between Russia and the US-led NATO military alliance. He said it would mean that the world is one step away from World War Three. He quickly pointed out that no one wanted such a scenario.
Putin’s remarks came after French President Emmanuel Macron’s interview to French television this week and his comments last month where he appeared hawkish on Russia.
Macron this week said France must ensure Russia does not win the Ukraine war and last month said he could not rule out the deployment of ground troops in Ukraine in the future.
Putin said “everything is possible in the modern world” while reacting to Macron’s comments. “It is clear to everyone that this will be one step away from a full-scale World War Three. I think hardly anyone is interested in this,” Putin said, adding that they picked up both English and French being spoken on the battlefield.
“There is nothing good in this, first of all for them, because they are dying there and in large numbers,” he said, while speaking to Reuters after winning the biggest ever landslide in post-Soviet Russian history.
As early as Friday, the first day of voting in the election, EU chief Charles Michel had sarcastically congratulated Putin on his “landslide victory”.
If he completes another full Kremlin term, Putin will have stayed in power longer than any Russian leader since Catherine the Great in the 18th century.
‘Mr. Navalny’
In his first public comments on Navalny’s death last month, Putin called his passing a “sad event”. Using his name in public for the first time in years during a televised news conference, Putin said: “As for Mr. Navalny. Yes, he passed away. This is always a sad event.”
Putin said a colleague had proposed swapping Navalny several days before he died for “some people” who are currently held in prisons in Western countries. “The person who was talking to me hadn’t finished his sentence and I said ‘I agree'”.
Allies of the late Alexei Navalny — Putin’s most prominent rival, who died in an Arctic prison last month — had tried to spoil his inevitable victory, urging voters to flood polling stations at noon and spoil their ballots.
His wife, Yulia Navalnaya, was greeted by supporters with flowers and applause in Berlin. After voting at the Russian embassy, she said she had written her late husband’s name on her ballot.
Some voters in Moscow answered the call from the opposition, telling AFP they had come to honour Navalny’s memory and show their opposition in the only legal way possible.
“I came to show that there are many of us, that we exist, that we are not some insignificant minority,” said 19-year-old student Artem Minasyan at a polling station in central Moscow.
Putin said the protest had had no impact and that those who spoiled their ballots would “have to be dealt with”.
At Navalny’s grave in a Moscow cemetery, AFP reporters saw spoiled ballot papers with the opposition leader’s name scrawled across them on a pile of flowers.
“We live in a country where we will go to jail if we speak our mind. So when I come to moments like this and see a lot of people, I realise that we are not alone,” said 33-year-old Regina.
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