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Russian election latest: West condemns Russian election but China and India back Putin's win - BBC News Russian election latest: West condemns Russian election but China and India back Putin's win - BBC News
(32 minutes later)
Laura Gozzi Sarah Rainsford
Europe reporter reporting from Kyiv
Russian media are sharing photos from central Moscow, where a concert to mark the 10-year anniversary of Russia's illegal annexation of Crimea is about to take place. Russian elections have been tightly controlled for a long time, increasingly so each year. This time, there were no genuine opposition candidates on the ballot at all.
The event will also mark President Putin's electoral victory. The Kremlin has spent years creating the impression that there is no other choice: that Putin is Russia.
Crowds are reportedly gathering near Red Square amid a heavy police presence. But for Ukraine, Putin is Mariupol, Bucha and Bakhmut.
Several popular Telegram channels have reported that university students were bussed into Moscow for the event. He's the reason for the rows of fresh graves at every town cemetery; for the displacement of millions from their homes and the nights in bomb shelters and basements for those who've stayed.
This isn't a new development. It was Vladimir Putin who launched the war that badly injured a young girl I met in Chernihiv, after a missile attack, then killed her brother at the front line, where he had gone to fight as a volunteer.
The Kremlin cares about the optics of such events, and so busloads of students or factory workers from the provinces are often sent to Moscow in order to ensure that "patriotic rallies" like today's are well-attended.
That same war sent another Ukrainian soldier back to the front today. Before he left, he told me he's the only one of his original group of some 30 men "still walking".
Of course, Putin hasn't done all this alone.
That's why it's hard to find Ukrainians these days who speak well of any Russians.
Relations between two neighbours have been ruined for decades, perhaps longer.
Read the full story here.
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