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Russian election latest: Putin addresses Red Square crowds after claiming landslide election win - BBC News Putin addresses Red Square crowds after claiming landslide election win - BBC News
(32 minutes later)
The former Prime Minister of Barbara Tasch
Ukraine, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, spoke to BBC Newshour earlier, following Vladimir Putin's widely expected win in the Russian presidential election. Live reporter
“It's not Putin who is winning," he told the programme- adding the result showed It is "the West and the free" who are actually "on the backfoot" and "on the edge of losing". That’s it for today’s live coverage of the Russian
Yatsenyuk, who was Prime Minister of Ukraine from 2014-2016, elections.
including at the time when Russia annexed Crimea, said Ukraine should As we’ve been reporting, Putin’s electoral victory - called out as
try to take back the occupied peninsula. neither free nor fair by Western leaders - has been casting a dark shadow over
He told the BBC that the West's lack of strong response to Crimea's occupation was a "clear-cut sign that Putin is to move forward". Ukraine, where armed men accompanied voters in regions under Russian control.
I do remember the response of the Western world after Putin illegally annexed Crimea, it was extremely weak." There
has been a lot of speculation over how this victory will affect the war in
Ukraine - but for James
Nixey, Director of the Russia-Eurasia Programme at the Chatham House think tank, it will only
embolden the Russian leader.
"Putin
is likely to use his ‘landslide’ as an endorsement to prosecute his war against
Ukraine harder and for longer,” he told me.
"Whether he actually believes it or not is immaterial. It is
now easier - or at least less risky - for him to engage in another round of
mobilisation and reshuffle his inner circle as and when he needs to.”
Nixey added that the war being "Putin’s only real policy
priority" meant all Russian state resources were directed toward it.
This election will quickly be forgotten. Rightly so because of its farcical nature. The war, however, will reverberate for decades to come, well beyond the end of hostilities and Putin’s lifetime, whether it ends naturally or violently."
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