This content originally appeared on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and was authored by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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PRISTINA — Kosovar Prime Minister Albin Kurti says he will not suspend a move by the central bank to ban the circulation of the Serbian dinar in parts of the country with Serbian majorities but will accept the forming of an Association of Serb-Majority Municipalities once Belgrade agrees to sign a basic agreement on bilateral relations.
The basic agreement for the normalization of relations with Serbia was reached in February 2023, and includes the formation of the association, which is expected to more adequately represent predominantly ethnic Serb areas in Kosovo.
Kosovo is not a member of the European Union or its common currency area, the eurozone, but it unilaterally adopted the euro in 2002 to help bring monetary stability and to simplify and reduce transaction costs inside and outside the country.
Serbia, which has never acknowledged its former province’s 2008 declaration of independence, still pays many ethnic Serbs at institutions in Serb-dominated parts of Kosovo in dinars. Many also hold their pensions and get child allowances in dinars.
“Regarding the Serbian-dinar-versus-euro issue, it is Kosovo’s central bank that decides and they have already decided on December 27 last year,” Kurti told RFE/RL’s Balkan Service in an interview on March 19, arguing that the ban, which came into force on February 1, was meant to fight financial crime and terrorism.
“We have, thanks to them, a new regulation that is going to enhance the integrity of the financial system to fight illicit activities financing terrorism,” Kurti said in Pristina on the same day top Serbian and Kosovar negotiators were holding bilateral meeting in Brussels with EU special envoy Miroslav Lajcak.
The Serbian dinar ban was reported to be high on the agenda, although no joint trilateral meeting has been confirmed so far.
The ban ratcheted up already high tensions between Serbia and Kosovo and threatened to scupper efforts by Washington and Brussels to get the dialogue between Pristina and Belgrade back on track.
“The dinar is not banned in Kosovo, but the euro is the only means of payment,” Kurti told RFE/RL, echoing the central bank’s line that the ban doesn’t stop anyone from accepting money from any country, it just means the money is converted into euros.
Still, the conversion adds a layer of cost and complication to the daily lives of ethnic Serbs still tied to the dinar.
“We cannot allow bagfuls of dinars in cash to enter our country. (It can happen) only through official financial channels with full transparency, who sends money to whom and for what purpose,” Kurti said, adding that any disparities on the ground would have time to be smoothed out over the three-month transition period.
“Serbia can send dinars, we will exchange them into euros and Serbs in Kosovo can benefit from that financial aid,” Kurti added.
However, the U.S. envoy to the Western Balkans last week warned that the ban had caused problems for some citizens in the region and challenges for the U.S.-Kosovo relationship.
Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Gabriel Escobar told RFE/RL on March 14 that Kosovo’s controversial decision on the dinar was “an issue that we need to address immediately.”
Escobar said that the issue had presented challenges in the bilateral relationship, although Washington remains Kosovo’s most reliable ally.
The U.S. envoy also said that his proposals for resolving the issue had been rejected by Kurti during their meeting.
“It’s not me as prime minister to decide about this thing,” Kurti told RFE/RL when asked about why he refused Escobar’s solutions.
“We’re a democracy where powers and duties are separated. Therefore, I can only help the central bank to affect a smooth transition,” Kurti said, declining to elaborate on Escobar’s proposals.
“Let those who made the proposals speak,” he added, reiterating that he cannot cancel the decision of an independent institution.
“No suspension will come out of talking to me, because the bank is an independent institution,” he said, adding that its governor reports only to parliament, not the government.
Asked whether he would at least advise the bank to extend the transition period, Kurti replied: “I cannot also advise the central bank of Kosovo. The governor has his own advisers.”
Referring to the basic agreement, Kurti said it was Belgrade that was hampering its implementation.
“I want the normalization of relations and I think that the signing of the basic agreement and its implementation annex can certainly cancel previous violations on one hand and, on the other hand can bring legal certainty for the future.
“The problem is that eight out of 11 articles of the basic agreement have been violated by Belgrade,” Kurti said, mentioning a letter sent by Serbian Prime Minister Ana Brnabic to the European Union, in which, according to him, her government said they were withdrawing their pledge to the deal “because they will never recognize independence of Kosovo, never accept Kosovo’s membership in the United Nations, and likewise they are not going to respect the territorial integrity of our country.”
Referring to the forming of the Association of Serb-Majority Municipalities, which is mentioned in Article 7 of the basic agreement, Kurti reiterated his government’s statement from October 27, which blamed Serbia for refusing to sign the document endorsed by the leaders of France, Italy, and Germany.
“What more can I do? We are leaders who are supposed to turn the text that we have agreed upon into signed agreements. Obviously, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic initially said yes to the agreement without intending to sign it and then regretted saying yes, as Mrs. Brnabic’s letter explained,” Kurti said.
“I believe that whoever mentions an association of Serbian-majority municipalities outside the basic agreement or before it serving Serbia’s quest to turn Kosovo into Bosnia,” he said, adding that such an association has to be established withing the framework of the Kosovar Constitution.
“In Brussels I said one cannot serve coffee without a cup. If you ask for coffee without a cup, I will show you an empty cup. The cup is the Republic of Kosovo. What is the legal framework of the association? Is it the constitution of the Republic of Kosova or that of Serbia? If I’m there, it’s the constitution of the Republic of Kosovo. No coffee without a cup.
“This is crucial to understand. Belgrade wants to put the cart before the horses. It’s not possible. There will be no movement as we have seen since February and March last year,” he said, adding that he was ready to go to Brussels again together with Vucic.
Referring to the frustration voiced by the United States and the European Union because of the lack of progress toward the Serbian dinar and the municipalities association, Kurti said that while they are indispensable partners, sometimes differences may arise.
“I consider United States an indispensable ally, friend, and partner. But this does not mean that we have an identical stance toward official Belgrade. As the prime minister of Kosovo, I cannot regard Belgrade through the eyes of the State Department…they do not see Belgrade as I see them. We do not have an identical stance. We have a different experience and history,” Kurti said.
This content originally appeared on News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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PRISTINA — Kosovar Prime Minister Albin Kurti says he will not suspend a move by the central bank to ban the circulation of the Serbian dinar in parts of the country with Serbian majorities but will accept the forming of an Association of Serb-Majority Municipalities once Belgrade agrees to sign a basic agreement on bilateral relations.
The basic agreement for the normalization of relations with Serbia was reached in February 2023, and includes the formation of the association, which is expected to more adequately represent predominantly ethnic Serb areas in Kosovo.
Kosovo is not a member of the European Union or its common currency area, the eurozone, but it unilaterally adopted the euro in 2002 to help bring monetary stability and to simplify and reduce transaction costs inside and outside the country.
Serbia, which has never acknowledged its former province’s 2008 declaration of independence, still pays many ethnic Serbs at institutions in Serb-dominated parts of Kosovo in dinars. Many also hold their pensions and get child allowances in dinars.
“Regarding the Serbian-dinar-versus-euro issue, it is Kosovo’s central bank that decides and they have already decided on December 27 last year,” Kurti told RFE/RL’s Balkan Service in an interview on March 19, arguing that the ban, which came into force on February 1, was meant to fight financial crime and terrorism.
“We have, thanks to them, a new regulation that is going to enhance the integrity of the financial system to fight illicit activities financing terrorism,” Kurti said in Pristina on the same day top Serbian and Kosovar negotiators were holding bilateral meeting in Brussels with EU special envoy Miroslav Lajcak.
The Serbian dinar ban was reported to be high on the agenda, although no joint trilateral meeting has been confirmed so far.
The ban ratcheted up already high tensions between Serbia and Kosovo and threatened to scupper efforts by Washington and Brussels to get the dialogue between Pristina and Belgrade back on track.
“The dinar is not banned in Kosovo, but the euro is the only means of payment,” Kurti told RFE/RL, echoing the central bank’s line that the ban doesn’t stop anyone from accepting money from any country, it just means the money is converted into euros.
Still, the conversion adds a layer of cost and complication to the daily lives of ethnic Serbs still tied to the dinar.
“We cannot allow bagfuls of dinars in cash to enter our country. (It can happen) only through official financial channels with full transparency, who sends money to whom and for what purpose,” Kurti said, adding that any disparities on the ground would have time to be smoothed out over the three-month transition period.
“Serbia can send dinars, we will exchange them into euros and Serbs in Kosovo can benefit from that financial aid,” Kurti added.
However, the U.S. envoy to the Western Balkans last week warned that the ban had caused problems for some citizens in the region and challenges for the U.S.-Kosovo relationship.
Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Gabriel Escobar told RFE/RL on March 14 that Kosovo’s controversial decision on the dinar was “an issue that we need to address immediately.”
Escobar said that the issue had presented challenges in the bilateral relationship, although Washington remains Kosovo’s most reliable ally.
The U.S. envoy also said that his proposals for resolving the issue had been rejected by Kurti during their meeting.
“It’s not me as prime minister to decide about this thing,” Kurti told RFE/RL when asked about why he refused Escobar’s solutions.
“We’re a democracy where powers and duties are separated. Therefore, I can only help the central bank to affect a smooth transition,” Kurti said, declining to elaborate on Escobar’s proposals.
“Let those who made the proposals speak,” he added, reiterating that he cannot cancel the decision of an independent institution.
“No suspension will come out of talking to me, because the bank is an independent institution,” he said, adding that its governor reports only to parliament, not the government.
Asked whether he would at least advise the bank to extend the transition period, Kurti replied: “I cannot also advise the central bank of Kosovo. The governor has his own advisers.”
Referring to the basic agreement, Kurti said it was Belgrade that was hampering its implementation.
“I want the normalization of relations and I think that the signing of the basic agreement and its implementation annex can certainly cancel previous violations on one hand and, on the other hand can bring legal certainty for the future.
“The problem is that eight out of 11 articles of the basic agreement have been violated by Belgrade,” Kurti said, mentioning a letter sent by Serbian Prime Minister Ana Brnabic to the European Union, in which, according to him, her government said they were withdrawing their pledge to the deal “because they will never recognize independence of Kosovo, never accept Kosovo’s membership in the United Nations, and likewise they are not going to respect the territorial integrity of our country.”
Referring to the forming of the Association of Serb-Majority Municipalities, which is mentioned in Article 7 of the basic agreement, Kurti reiterated his government’s statement from October 27, which blamed Serbia for refusing to sign the document endorsed by the leaders of France, Italy, and Germany.
“What more can I do? We are leaders who are supposed to turn the text that we have agreed upon into signed agreements. Obviously, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic initially said yes to the agreement without intending to sign it and then regretted saying yes, as Mrs. Brnabic’s letter explained,” Kurti said.
“I believe that whoever mentions an association of Serbian-majority municipalities outside the basic agreement or before it serving Serbia’s quest to turn Kosovo into Bosnia,” he said, adding that such an association has to be established withing the framework of the Kosovar Constitution.
“In Brussels I said one cannot serve coffee without a cup. If you ask for coffee without a cup, I will show you an empty cup. The cup is the Republic of Kosovo. What is the legal framework of the association? Is it the constitution of the Republic of Kosova or that of Serbia? If I’m there, it’s the constitution of the Republic of Kosovo. No coffee without a cup.
“This is crucial to understand. Belgrade wants to put the cart before the horses. It’s not possible. There will be no movement as we have seen since February and March last year,” he said, adding that he was ready to go to Brussels again together with Vucic.
Referring to the frustration voiced by the United States and the European Union because of the lack of progress toward the Serbian dinar and the municipalities association, Kurti said that while they are indispensable partners, sometimes differences may arise.
“I consider United States an indispensable ally, friend, and partner. But this does not mean that we have an identical stance toward official Belgrade. As the prime minister of Kosovo, I cannot regard Belgrade through the eyes of the State Department…they do not see Belgrade as I see them. We do not have an identical stance. We have a different experience and history,” Kurti said.
This content originally appeared on News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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PRISTINA — Kosovar Prime Minister Albin Kurti says he will not suspend a move by the central bank to ban the circulation of the Serbian dinar in parts of the country with Serbian majorities but will accept the forming of an Association of Serb-Majority Municipalities once Belgrade agrees to sign a basic agreement on bilateral relations.
The basic agreement for the normalization of relations with Serbia was reached in February 2023, and includes the formation of the association, which is expected to more adequately represent predominantly ethnic Serb areas in Kosovo.
Kosovo is not a member of the European Union or its common currency area, the eurozone, but it unilaterally adopted the euro in 2002 to help bring monetary stability and to simplify and reduce transaction costs inside and outside the country.
Serbia, which has never acknowledged its former province’s 2008 declaration of independence, still pays many ethnic Serbs at institutions in Serb-dominated parts of Kosovo in dinars. Many also hold their pensions and get child allowances in dinars.
“Regarding the Serbian-dinar-versus-euro issue, it is Kosovo’s central bank that decides and they have already decided on December 27 last year,” Kurti told RFE/RL’s Balkan Service in an interview on March 19, arguing that the ban, which came into force on February 1, was meant to fight financial crime and terrorism.
“We have, thanks to them, a new regulation that is going to enhance the integrity of the financial system to fight illicit activities financing terrorism,” Kurti said in Pristina on the same day top Serbian and Kosovar negotiators were holding bilateral meeting in Brussels with EU special envoy Miroslav Lajcak.
The Serbian dinar ban was reported to be high on the agenda, although no joint trilateral meeting has been confirmed so far.
The ban ratcheted up already high tensions between Serbia and Kosovo and threatened to scupper efforts by Washington and Brussels to get the dialogue between Pristina and Belgrade back on track.
“The dinar is not banned in Kosovo, but the euro is the only means of payment,” Kurti told RFE/RL, echoing the central bank’s line that the ban doesn’t stop anyone from accepting money from any country, it just means the money is converted into euros.
Still, the conversion adds a layer of cost and complication to the daily lives of ethnic Serbs still tied to the dinar.
“We cannot allow bagfuls of dinars in cash to enter our country. (It can happen) only through official financial channels with full transparency, who sends money to whom and for what purpose,” Kurti said, adding that any disparities on the ground would have time to be smoothed out over the three-month transition period.
“Serbia can send dinars, we will exchange them into euros and Serbs in Kosovo can benefit from that financial aid,” Kurti added.
However, the U.S. envoy to the Western Balkans last week warned that the ban had caused problems for some citizens in the region and challenges for the U.S.-Kosovo relationship.
Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Gabriel Escobar told RFE/RL on March 14 that Kosovo’s controversial decision on the dinar was “an issue that we need to address immediately.”
Escobar said that the issue had presented challenges in the bilateral relationship, although Washington remains Kosovo’s most reliable ally.
The U.S. envoy also said that his proposals for resolving the issue had been rejected by Kurti during their meeting.
“It’s not me as prime minister to decide about this thing,” Kurti told RFE/RL when asked about why he refused Escobar’s solutions.
“We’re a democracy where powers and duties are separated. Therefore, I can only help the central bank to affect a smooth transition,” Kurti said, declining to elaborate on Escobar’s proposals.
“Let those who made the proposals speak,” he added, reiterating that he cannot cancel the decision of an independent institution.
“No suspension will come out of talking to me, because the bank is an independent institution,” he said, adding that its governor reports only to parliament, not the government.
Asked whether he would at least advise the bank to extend the transition period, Kurti replied: “I cannot also advise the central bank of Kosovo. The governor has his own advisers.”
Referring to the basic agreement, Kurti said it was Belgrade that was hampering its implementation.
“I want the normalization of relations and I think that the signing of the basic agreement and its implementation annex can certainly cancel previous violations on one hand and, on the other hand can bring legal certainty for the future.
“The problem is that eight out of 11 articles of the basic agreement have been violated by Belgrade,” Kurti said, mentioning a letter sent by Serbian Prime Minister Ana Brnabic to the European Union, in which, according to him, her government said they were withdrawing their pledge to the deal “because they will never recognize independence of Kosovo, never accept Kosovo’s membership in the United Nations, and likewise they are not going to respect the territorial integrity of our country.”
Referring to the forming of the Association of Serb-Majority Municipalities, which is mentioned in Article 7 of the basic agreement, Kurti reiterated his government’s statement from October 27, which blamed Serbia for refusing to sign the document endorsed by the leaders of France, Italy, and Germany.
“What more can I do? We are leaders who are supposed to turn the text that we have agreed upon into signed agreements. Obviously, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic initially said yes to the agreement without intending to sign it and then regretted saying yes, as Mrs. Brnabic’s letter explained,” Kurti said.
“I believe that whoever mentions an association of Serbian-majority municipalities outside the basic agreement or before it serving Serbia’s quest to turn Kosovo into Bosnia,” he said, adding that such an association has to be established withing the framework of the Kosovar Constitution.
“In Brussels I said one cannot serve coffee without a cup. If you ask for coffee without a cup, I will show you an empty cup. The cup is the Republic of Kosovo. What is the legal framework of the association? Is it the constitution of the Republic of Kosova or that of Serbia? If I’m there, it’s the constitution of the Republic of Kosovo. No coffee without a cup.
“This is crucial to understand. Belgrade wants to put the cart before the horses. It’s not possible. There will be no movement as we have seen since February and March last year,” he said, adding that he was ready to go to Brussels again together with Vucic.
Referring to the frustration voiced by the United States and the European Union because of the lack of progress toward the Serbian dinar and the municipalities association, Kurti said that while they are indispensable partners, sometimes differences may arise.
“I consider United States an indispensable ally, friend, and partner. But this does not mean that we have an identical stance toward official Belgrade. As the prime minister of Kosovo, I cannot regard Belgrade through the eyes of the State Department…they do not see Belgrade as I see them. We do not have an identical stance. We have a different experience and history,” Kurti said.
This content originally appeared on News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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PRISTINA — Kosovar Prime Minister Albin Kurti says he will not suspend a move by the central bank to ban the circulation of the Serbian dinar in parts of the country with Serbian majorities but will accept the forming of an Association of Serb-Majority Municipalities once Belgrade agrees to sign a basic agreement on bilateral relations.
The basic agreement for the normalization of relations with Serbia was reached in February 2023, and includes the formation of the association, which is expected to more adequately represent predominantly ethnic Serb areas in Kosovo.
Kosovo is not a member of the European Union or its common currency area, the eurozone, but it unilaterally adopted the euro in 2002 to help bring monetary stability and to simplify and reduce transaction costs inside and outside the country.
Serbia, which has never acknowledged its former province’s 2008 declaration of independence, still pays many ethnic Serbs at institutions in Serb-dominated parts of Kosovo in dinars. Many also hold their pensions and get child allowances in dinars.
“Regarding the Serbian-dinar-versus-euro issue, it is Kosovo’s central bank that decides and they have already decided on December 27 last year,” Kurti told RFE/RL’s Balkan Service in an interview on March 19, arguing that the ban, which came into force on February 1, was meant to fight financial crime and terrorism.
“We have, thanks to them, a new regulation that is going to enhance the integrity of the financial system to fight illicit activities financing terrorism,” Kurti said in Pristina on the same day top Serbian and Kosovar negotiators were holding bilateral meeting in Brussels with EU special envoy Miroslav Lajcak.
The Serbian dinar ban was reported to be high on the agenda, although no joint trilateral meeting has been confirmed so far.
The ban ratcheted up already high tensions between Serbia and Kosovo and threatened to scupper efforts by Washington and Brussels to get the dialogue between Pristina and Belgrade back on track.
“The dinar is not banned in Kosovo, but the euro is the only means of payment,” Kurti told RFE/RL, echoing the central bank’s line that the ban doesn’t stop anyone from accepting money from any country, it just means the money is converted into euros.
Still, the conversion adds a layer of cost and complication to the daily lives of ethnic Serbs still tied to the dinar.
“We cannot allow bagfuls of dinars in cash to enter our country. (It can happen) only through official financial channels with full transparency, who sends money to whom and for what purpose,” Kurti said, adding that any disparities on the ground would have time to be smoothed out over the three-month transition period.
“Serbia can send dinars, we will exchange them into euros and Serbs in Kosovo can benefit from that financial aid,” Kurti added.
However, the U.S. envoy to the Western Balkans last week warned that the ban had caused problems for some citizens in the region and challenges for the U.S.-Kosovo relationship.
Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Gabriel Escobar told RFE/RL on March 14 that Kosovo’s controversial decision on the dinar was “an issue that we need to address immediately.”
Escobar said that the issue had presented challenges in the bilateral relationship, although Washington remains Kosovo’s most reliable ally.
The U.S. envoy also said that his proposals for resolving the issue had been rejected by Kurti during their meeting.
“It’s not me as prime minister to decide about this thing,” Kurti told RFE/RL when asked about why he refused Escobar’s solutions.
“We’re a democracy where powers and duties are separated. Therefore, I can only help the central bank to affect a smooth transition,” Kurti said, declining to elaborate on Escobar’s proposals.
“Let those who made the proposals speak,” he added, reiterating that he cannot cancel the decision of an independent institution.
“No suspension will come out of talking to me, because the bank is an independent institution,” he said, adding that its governor reports only to parliament, not the government.
Asked whether he would at least advise the bank to extend the transition period, Kurti replied: “I cannot also advise the central bank of Kosovo. The governor has his own advisers.”
Referring to the basic agreement, Kurti said it was Belgrade that was hampering its implementation.
“I want the normalization of relations and I think that the signing of the basic agreement and its implementation annex can certainly cancel previous violations on one hand and, on the other hand can bring legal certainty for the future.
“The problem is that eight out of 11 articles of the basic agreement have been violated by Belgrade,” Kurti said, mentioning a letter sent by Serbian Prime Minister Ana Brnabic to the European Union, in which, according to him, her government said they were withdrawing their pledge to the deal “because they will never recognize independence of Kosovo, never accept Kosovo’s membership in the United Nations, and likewise they are not going to respect the territorial integrity of our country.”
Referring to the forming of the Association of Serb-Majority Municipalities, which is mentioned in Article 7 of the basic agreement, Kurti reiterated his government’s statement from October 27, which blamed Serbia for refusing to sign the document endorsed by the leaders of France, Italy, and Germany.
“What more can I do? We are leaders who are supposed to turn the text that we have agreed upon into signed agreements. Obviously, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic initially said yes to the agreement without intending to sign it and then regretted saying yes, as Mrs. Brnabic’s letter explained,” Kurti said.
“I believe that whoever mentions an association of Serbian-majority municipalities outside the basic agreement or before it serving Serbia’s quest to turn Kosovo into Bosnia,” he said, adding that such an association has to be established withing the framework of the Kosovar Constitution.
“In Brussels I said one cannot serve coffee without a cup. If you ask for coffee without a cup, I will show you an empty cup. The cup is the Republic of Kosovo. What is the legal framework of the association? Is it the constitution of the Republic of Kosova or that of Serbia? If I’m there, it’s the constitution of the Republic of Kosovo. No coffee without a cup.
“This is crucial to understand. Belgrade wants to put the cart before the horses. It’s not possible. There will be no movement as we have seen since February and March last year,” he said, adding that he was ready to go to Brussels again together with Vucic.
Referring to the frustration voiced by the United States and the European Union because of the lack of progress toward the Serbian dinar and the municipalities association, Kurti said that while they are indispensable partners, sometimes differences may arise.
“I consider United States an indispensable ally, friend, and partner. But this does not mean that we have an identical stance toward official Belgrade. As the prime minister of Kosovo, I cannot regard Belgrade through the eyes of the State Department…they do not see Belgrade as I see them. We do not have an identical stance. We have a different experience and history,” Kurti said.
This content originally appeared on News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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PRISTINA — Kosovar Prime Minister Albin Kurti says he will not suspend a move by the central bank to ban the circulation of the Serbian dinar in parts of the country with Serbian majorities but will accept the forming of an Association of Serb-Majority Municipalities once Belgrade agrees to sign a basic agreement on bilateral relations.
The basic agreement for the normalization of relations with Serbia was reached in February 2023, and includes the formation of the association, which is expected to more adequately represent predominantly ethnic Serb areas in Kosovo.
Kosovo is not a member of the European Union or its common currency area, the eurozone, but it unilaterally adopted the euro in 2002 to help bring monetary stability and to simplify and reduce transaction costs inside and outside the country.
Serbia, which has never acknowledged its former province’s 2008 declaration of independence, still pays many ethnic Serbs at institutions in Serb-dominated parts of Kosovo in dinars. Many also hold their pensions and get child allowances in dinars.
“Regarding the Serbian-dinar-versus-euro issue, it is Kosovo’s central bank that decides and they have already decided on December 27 last year,” Kurti told RFE/RL’s Balkan Service in an interview on March 19, arguing that the ban, which came into force on February 1, was meant to fight financial crime and terrorism.
“We have, thanks to them, a new regulation that is going to enhance the integrity of the financial system to fight illicit activities financing terrorism,” Kurti said in Pristina on the same day top Serbian and Kosovar negotiators were holding bilateral meeting in Brussels with EU special envoy Miroslav Lajcak.
The Serbian dinar ban was reported to be high on the agenda, although no joint trilateral meeting has been confirmed so far.
The ban ratcheted up already high tensions between Serbia and Kosovo and threatened to scupper efforts by Washington and Brussels to get the dialogue between Pristina and Belgrade back on track.
“The dinar is not banned in Kosovo, but the euro is the only means of payment,” Kurti told RFE/RL, echoing the central bank’s line that the ban doesn’t stop anyone from accepting money from any country, it just means the money is converted into euros.
Still, the conversion adds a layer of cost and complication to the daily lives of ethnic Serbs still tied to the dinar.
“We cannot allow bagfuls of dinars in cash to enter our country. (It can happen) only through official financial channels with full transparency, who sends money to whom and for what purpose,” Kurti said, adding that any disparities on the ground would have time to be smoothed out over the three-month transition period.
“Serbia can send dinars, we will exchange them into euros and Serbs in Kosovo can benefit from that financial aid,” Kurti added.
However, the U.S. envoy to the Western Balkans last week warned that the ban had caused problems for some citizens in the region and challenges for the U.S.-Kosovo relationship.
Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Gabriel Escobar told RFE/RL on March 14 that Kosovo’s controversial decision on the dinar was “an issue that we need to address immediately.”
Escobar said that the issue had presented challenges in the bilateral relationship, although Washington remains Kosovo’s most reliable ally.
The U.S. envoy also said that his proposals for resolving the issue had been rejected by Kurti during their meeting.
“It’s not me as prime minister to decide about this thing,” Kurti told RFE/RL when asked about why he refused Escobar’s solutions.
“We’re a democracy where powers and duties are separated. Therefore, I can only help the central bank to affect a smooth transition,” Kurti said, declining to elaborate on Escobar’s proposals.
“Let those who made the proposals speak,” he added, reiterating that he cannot cancel the decision of an independent institution.
“No suspension will come out of talking to me, because the bank is an independent institution,” he said, adding that its governor reports only to parliament, not the government.
Asked whether he would at least advise the bank to extend the transition period, Kurti replied: “I cannot also advise the central bank of Kosovo. The governor has his own advisers.”
Referring to the basic agreement, Kurti said it was Belgrade that was hampering its implementation.
“I want the normalization of relations and I think that the signing of the basic agreement and its implementation annex can certainly cancel previous violations on one hand and, on the other hand can bring legal certainty for the future.
“The problem is that eight out of 11 articles of the basic agreement have been violated by Belgrade,” Kurti said, mentioning a letter sent by Serbian Prime Minister Ana Brnabic to the European Union, in which, according to him, her government said they were withdrawing their pledge to the deal “because they will never recognize independence of Kosovo, never accept Kosovo’s membership in the United Nations, and likewise they are not going to respect the territorial integrity of our country.”
Referring to the forming of the Association of Serb-Majority Municipalities, which is mentioned in Article 7 of the basic agreement, Kurti reiterated his government’s statement from October 27, which blamed Serbia for refusing to sign the document endorsed by the leaders of France, Italy, and Germany.
“What more can I do? We are leaders who are supposed to turn the text that we have agreed upon into signed agreements. Obviously, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic initially said yes to the agreement without intending to sign it and then regretted saying yes, as Mrs. Brnabic’s letter explained,” Kurti said.
“I believe that whoever mentions an association of Serbian-majority municipalities outside the basic agreement or before it serving Serbia’s quest to turn Kosovo into Bosnia,” he said, adding that such an association has to be established withing the framework of the Kosovar Constitution.
“In Brussels I said one cannot serve coffee without a cup. If you ask for coffee without a cup, I will show you an empty cup. The cup is the Republic of Kosovo. What is the legal framework of the association? Is it the constitution of the Republic of Kosova or that of Serbia? If I’m there, it’s the constitution of the Republic of Kosovo. No coffee without a cup.
“This is crucial to understand. Belgrade wants to put the cart before the horses. It’s not possible. There will be no movement as we have seen since February and March last year,” he said, adding that he was ready to go to Brussels again together with Vucic.
Referring to the frustration voiced by the United States and the European Union because of the lack of progress toward the Serbian dinar and the municipalities association, Kurti said that while they are indispensable partners, sometimes differences may arise.
“I consider United States an indispensable ally, friend, and partner. But this does not mean that we have an identical stance toward official Belgrade. As the prime minister of Kosovo, I cannot regard Belgrade through the eyes of the State Department…they do not see Belgrade as I see them. We do not have an identical stance. We have a different experience and history,” Kurti said.
This content originally appeared on News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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PRISTINA — Kosovar Prime Minister Albin Kurti says he will not suspend a move by the central bank to ban the circulation of the Serbian dinar in parts of the country with Serbian majorities but will accept the forming of an Association of Serb-Majority Municipalities once Belgrade agrees to sign a basic agreement on bilateral relations.
The basic agreement for the normalization of relations with Serbia was reached in February 2023, and includes the formation of the association, which is expected to more adequately represent predominantly ethnic Serb areas in Kosovo.
Kosovo is not a member of the European Union or its common currency area, the eurozone, but it unilaterally adopted the euro in 2002 to help bring monetary stability and to simplify and reduce transaction costs inside and outside the country.
Serbia, which has never acknowledged its former province’s 2008 declaration of independence, still pays many ethnic Serbs at institutions in Serb-dominated parts of Kosovo in dinars. Many also hold their pensions and get child allowances in dinars.
“Regarding the Serbian-dinar-versus-euro issue, it is Kosovo’s central bank that decides and they have already decided on December 27 last year,” Kurti told RFE/RL’s Balkan Service in an interview on March 19, arguing that the ban, which came into force on February 1, was meant to fight financial crime and terrorism.
“We have, thanks to them, a new regulation that is going to enhance the integrity of the financial system to fight illicit activities financing terrorism,” Kurti said in Pristina on the same day top Serbian and Kosovar negotiators were holding bilateral meeting in Brussels with EU special envoy Miroslav Lajcak.
The Serbian dinar ban was reported to be high on the agenda, although no joint trilateral meeting has been confirmed so far.
The ban ratcheted up already high tensions between Serbia and Kosovo and threatened to scupper efforts by Washington and Brussels to get the dialogue between Pristina and Belgrade back on track.
“The dinar is not banned in Kosovo, but the euro is the only means of payment,” Kurti told RFE/RL, echoing the central bank’s line that the ban doesn’t stop anyone from accepting money from any country, it just means the money is converted into euros.
Still, the conversion adds a layer of cost and complication to the daily lives of ethnic Serbs still tied to the dinar.
“We cannot allow bagfuls of dinars in cash to enter our country. (It can happen) only through official financial channels with full transparency, who sends money to whom and for what purpose,” Kurti said, adding that any disparities on the ground would have time to be smoothed out over the three-month transition period.
“Serbia can send dinars, we will exchange them into euros and Serbs in Kosovo can benefit from that financial aid,” Kurti added.
However, the U.S. envoy to the Western Balkans last week warned that the ban had caused problems for some citizens in the region and challenges for the U.S.-Kosovo relationship.
Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Gabriel Escobar told RFE/RL on March 14 that Kosovo’s controversial decision on the dinar was “an issue that we need to address immediately.”
Escobar said that the issue had presented challenges in the bilateral relationship, although Washington remains Kosovo’s most reliable ally.
The U.S. envoy also said that his proposals for resolving the issue had been rejected by Kurti during their meeting.
“It’s not me as prime minister to decide about this thing,” Kurti told RFE/RL when asked about why he refused Escobar’s solutions.
“We’re a democracy where powers and duties are separated. Therefore, I can only help the central bank to affect a smooth transition,” Kurti said, declining to elaborate on Escobar’s proposals.
“Let those who made the proposals speak,” he added, reiterating that he cannot cancel the decision of an independent institution.
“No suspension will come out of talking to me, because the bank is an independent institution,” he said, adding that its governor reports only to parliament, not the government.
Asked whether he would at least advise the bank to extend the transition period, Kurti replied: “I cannot also advise the central bank of Kosovo. The governor has his own advisers.”
Referring to the basic agreement, Kurti said it was Belgrade that was hampering its implementation.
“I want the normalization of relations and I think that the signing of the basic agreement and its implementation annex can certainly cancel previous violations on one hand and, on the other hand can bring legal certainty for the future.
“The problem is that eight out of 11 articles of the basic agreement have been violated by Belgrade,” Kurti said, mentioning a letter sent by Serbian Prime Minister Ana Brnabic to the European Union, in which, according to him, her government said they were withdrawing their pledge to the deal “because they will never recognize independence of Kosovo, never accept Kosovo’s membership in the United Nations, and likewise they are not going to respect the territorial integrity of our country.”
Referring to the forming of the Association of Serb-Majority Municipalities, which is mentioned in Article 7 of the basic agreement, Kurti reiterated his government’s statement from October 27, which blamed Serbia for refusing to sign the document endorsed by the leaders of France, Italy, and Germany.
“What more can I do? We are leaders who are supposed to turn the text that we have agreed upon into signed agreements. Obviously, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic initially said yes to the agreement without intending to sign it and then regretted saying yes, as Mrs. Brnabic’s letter explained,” Kurti said.
“I believe that whoever mentions an association of Serbian-majority municipalities outside the basic agreement or before it serving Serbia’s quest to turn Kosovo into Bosnia,” he said, adding that such an association has to be established withing the framework of the Kosovar Constitution.
“In Brussels I said one cannot serve coffee without a cup. If you ask for coffee without a cup, I will show you an empty cup. The cup is the Republic of Kosovo. What is the legal framework of the association? Is it the constitution of the Republic of Kosova or that of Serbia? If I’m there, it’s the constitution of the Republic of Kosovo. No coffee without a cup.
“This is crucial to understand. Belgrade wants to put the cart before the horses. It’s not possible. There will be no movement as we have seen since February and March last year,” he said, adding that he was ready to go to Brussels again together with Vucic.
Referring to the frustration voiced by the United States and the European Union because of the lack of progress toward the Serbian dinar and the municipalities association, Kurti said that while they are indispensable partners, sometimes differences may arise.
“I consider United States an indispensable ally, friend, and partner. But this does not mean that we have an identical stance toward official Belgrade. As the prime minister of Kosovo, I cannot regard Belgrade through the eyes of the State Department…they do not see Belgrade as I see them. We do not have an identical stance. We have a different experience and history,” Kurti said.
This content originally appeared on News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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PRISTINA — Kosovar Prime Minister Albin Kurti says he will not suspend a move by the central bank to ban the circulation of the Serbian dinar in parts of the country with Serbian majorities but will accept the forming of an Association of Serb-Majority Municipalities once Belgrade agrees to sign a basic agreement on bilateral relations.
The basic agreement for the normalization of relations with Serbia was reached in February 2023, and includes the formation of the association, which is expected to more adequately represent predominantly ethnic Serb areas in Kosovo.
Kosovo is not a member of the European Union or its common currency area, the eurozone, but it unilaterally adopted the euro in 2002 to help bring monetary stability and to simplify and reduce transaction costs inside and outside the country.
Serbia, which has never acknowledged its former province’s 2008 declaration of independence, still pays many ethnic Serbs at institutions in Serb-dominated parts of Kosovo in dinars. Many also hold their pensions and get child allowances in dinars.
“Regarding the Serbian-dinar-versus-euro issue, it is Kosovo’s central bank that decides and they have already decided on December 27 last year,” Kurti told RFE/RL’s Balkan Service in an interview on March 19, arguing that the ban, which came into force on February 1, was meant to fight financial crime and terrorism.
“We have, thanks to them, a new regulation that is going to enhance the integrity of the financial system to fight illicit activities financing terrorism,” Kurti said in Pristina on the same day top Serbian and Kosovar negotiators were holding bilateral meeting in Brussels with EU special envoy Miroslav Lajcak.
The Serbian dinar ban was reported to be high on the agenda, although no joint trilateral meeting has been confirmed so far.
The ban ratcheted up already high tensions between Serbia and Kosovo and threatened to scupper efforts by Washington and Brussels to get the dialogue between Pristina and Belgrade back on track.
“The dinar is not banned in Kosovo, but the euro is the only means of payment,” Kurti told RFE/RL, echoing the central bank’s line that the ban doesn’t stop anyone from accepting money from any country, it just means the money is converted into euros.
Still, the conversion adds a layer of cost and complication to the daily lives of ethnic Serbs still tied to the dinar.
“We cannot allow bagfuls of dinars in cash to enter our country. (It can happen) only through official financial channels with full transparency, who sends money to whom and for what purpose,” Kurti said, adding that any disparities on the ground would have time to be smoothed out over the three-month transition period.
“Serbia can send dinars, we will exchange them into euros and Serbs in Kosovo can benefit from that financial aid,” Kurti added.
However, the U.S. envoy to the Western Balkans last week warned that the ban had caused problems for some citizens in the region and challenges for the U.S.-Kosovo relationship.
Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Gabriel Escobar told RFE/RL on March 14 that Kosovo’s controversial decision on the dinar was “an issue that we need to address immediately.”
Escobar said that the issue had presented challenges in the bilateral relationship, although Washington remains Kosovo’s most reliable ally.
The U.S. envoy also said that his proposals for resolving the issue had been rejected by Kurti during their meeting.
“It’s not me as prime minister to decide about this thing,” Kurti told RFE/RL when asked about why he refused Escobar’s solutions.
“We’re a democracy where powers and duties are separated. Therefore, I can only help the central bank to affect a smooth transition,” Kurti said, declining to elaborate on Escobar’s proposals.
“Let those who made the proposals speak,” he added, reiterating that he cannot cancel the decision of an independent institution.
“No suspension will come out of talking to me, because the bank is an independent institution,” he said, adding that its governor reports only to parliament, not the government.
Asked whether he would at least advise the bank to extend the transition period, Kurti replied: “I cannot also advise the central bank of Kosovo. The governor has his own advisers.”
Referring to the basic agreement, Kurti said it was Belgrade that was hampering its implementation.
“I want the normalization of relations and I think that the signing of the basic agreement and its implementation annex can certainly cancel previous violations on one hand and, on the other hand can bring legal certainty for the future.
“The problem is that eight out of 11 articles of the basic agreement have been violated by Belgrade,” Kurti said, mentioning a letter sent by Serbian Prime Minister Ana Brnabic to the European Union, in which, according to him, her government said they were withdrawing their pledge to the deal “because they will never recognize independence of Kosovo, never accept Kosovo’s membership in the United Nations, and likewise they are not going to respect the territorial integrity of our country.”
Referring to the forming of the Association of Serb-Majority Municipalities, which is mentioned in Article 7 of the basic agreement, Kurti reiterated his government’s statement from October 27, which blamed Serbia for refusing to sign the document endorsed by the leaders of France, Italy, and Germany.
“What more can I do? We are leaders who are supposed to turn the text that we have agreed upon into signed agreements. Obviously, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic initially said yes to the agreement without intending to sign it and then regretted saying yes, as Mrs. Brnabic’s letter explained,” Kurti said.
“I believe that whoever mentions an association of Serbian-majority municipalities outside the basic agreement or before it serving Serbia’s quest to turn Kosovo into Bosnia,” he said, adding that such an association has to be established withing the framework of the Kosovar Constitution.
“In Brussels I said one cannot serve coffee without a cup. If you ask for coffee without a cup, I will show you an empty cup. The cup is the Republic of Kosovo. What is the legal framework of the association? Is it the constitution of the Republic of Kosova or that of Serbia? If I’m there, it’s the constitution of the Republic of Kosovo. No coffee without a cup.
“This is crucial to understand. Belgrade wants to put the cart before the horses. It’s not possible. There will be no movement as we have seen since February and March last year,” he said, adding that he was ready to go to Brussels again together with Vucic.
Referring to the frustration voiced by the United States and the European Union because of the lack of progress toward the Serbian dinar and the municipalities association, Kurti said that while they are indispensable partners, sometimes differences may arise.
“I consider United States an indispensable ally, friend, and partner. But this does not mean that we have an identical stance toward official Belgrade. As the prime minister of Kosovo, I cannot regard Belgrade through the eyes of the State Department…they do not see Belgrade as I see them. We do not have an identical stance. We have a different experience and history,” Kurti said.
This content originally appeared on News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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This content originally appeared on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and was authored by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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This content originally appeared on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and was authored by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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This content originally appeared on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and was authored by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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This content originally appeared on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and was authored by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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This content originally appeared on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and was authored by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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Vladimir Putin has claimed a fifth presidential term with a landslide victory in a tightly controlled election that has been condemned by the West as neither free nor fair as the Russian leader seeks to prove overwhelming popular support for his full-scale invasion of Ukraine and increasingly repressive policies.
With 99.75 percent of ballots counted, Putin won another six-year term with a post-Soviet record of 87.29 percent of the vote, the Central Elections Committee (TsIK) said on March 18, adding that turnout was also at a “record” level, with 77.44 percent of eligible voters casting ballots.
The 71-year old Putin — who has ruled as either president or prime minister since 2000 — is now set to surpass Soviet dictator Josef Stalin’s nearly 30-year reign to become the longest-serving Russian leader in more than two centuries.
“This election has been based on repression and intimidation,” the European Union’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell told journalists in Brussels on March 18 as the bloc’s foreign ministers gathered to discuss the election, among other issues.
The March 15-17 vote is the first for Putin since he launched his invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 that has killed tens of thousands of Russians and led to a clear break in relations with the West. In holding what has widely been viewed as faux elections, Putin wants to show that he has the nation’s full support, experts said.
The vote was also held in Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine, where hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers are located. Moscow illegally annexed the regions since launching the invasion, though it remains unclear how much of the territory it controls.
The Kremlin’s goal “is to get as many people as possible to sign off on Russia’s war against Ukraine. The idea is to get millions of Russian citizens to retroactively approve the decision Putin single-handedly made two years ago,” Maksim Trudolyubov, a senior fellow at the Kennan Institute, wrote in a note ahead of the vote.
In remarks shortly after he was declared the winner, Putin said the election showed that the nation was “one team.”
But Western leaders condemned the vote, with the White House National Security Council spokesperson saying they “are obviously not free nor fair given how Mr. Putin has imprisoned political opponents and prevented others from running against him.”
British Foreign Secretary David Cameron said “this is not what free and fair elections look like,” adding in his message on X, formerly Twitter, that illegal elections have also been held on occupied Ukrainian territory.
The French Foreign Ministry said Putin’s reelection came amid a wave of repression against civil society. It also praised in a statement the courage of “the many Russian citizens who peacefully protested against this attack on their fundamental political rights.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Putin has become “sick with power” and he is just “simulating” elections.
“This imitation of ‘elections’ has no legitimacy and cannot have any. This person must end up in the dock in The Hague [at the International UN Tribunal for War Crimes],” Zelenskiy said on X.
Putin’s allies were quick to heap praise on the Russian leader for his election success.
China, one of Russia’s most importants allies, congratulated Putin, with Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian saying President Xi Jinping and the Russian leader “will continue to maintain close exchanges, lead the two countries to continue to uphold long-standing good-neighborly friendship, deepen comprehensive strategic coordination.”
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi called Putin’s victory “decisive,” the state news agency IRNA reported.
WATCH: Leading psychiatrists discuss how excessive power can impact brain functioning and what the impulse for total control reveals about the mind and personality traits of authority figures.
Putin was opposed by three relatively unknown, Kremlin-friendly politicians whose campaign was barely noticeable. The main intrigue was whether Russians would heed opposition calls to gather at polling stations at noon on March 17 to silently protest against Putin’s rule.
Russian media had reported in the months leading up to the election that the Kremlin was determined to engineer a victory for Putin that would surpass the 2018 results, when he won 77.5 percent of the vote with a turnout of 67.5 percent.
The Kremlin banned anti-war politician Boris Nadezhdin from the ballot after tens of thousands of voters lined up in the cold to support his candidacy. Nadezhdin threatened to undermine the narrative of overwhelming support for Putin and his war, experts said.
Independent election observers were barred from working at this year’s presidential election for the first time in post-Soviet history, experts said. Russian elections have been notorious for ballot stuffing and other irregularities.
The vote was also held in Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine, where hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers are located.
The United States called the elections neither fair nor free.
‘Noon Against Putin’
With options to express resistance severely limited by the lack of competition and repressive laws, opposition leaders called on voters opposed to Putin to gather near polls at noon to show the Kremlin and the country that they were still a force.
Russia’s opposition movement suffered a serious blow last month when Aleksei Navalny, Putin’s fiercest and most popular critic, died in unclear circumstances in a maximum-security prison in the Arctic where he was serving a 19-year sentence on charges of extremism widely seen as politically motivated.
Long lines formed at polling stations across Russia’s 11 time zones at the designated time for the “Noon Against Putin” protest, including in Novosibirsk, Chita, Yekaterinburg, Perm, and Moscow among other Russian cities.
“We’re not really expecting anything, but I’d somehow like to make a record of this election for myself, tick the box for myself, so, when talking about it later, I could say that I didn’t just sit at home, but came and tried to do something,” said one Russian who came to vote at noon.
“The action has achieved its goals,” Ivan Zhdanov, the head the Anti-Corruption Foundation formerly headed by Navalny, said in a YouTube video. “The action has shown that there is another Russia, there are people who stand against Putin.”
The Moscow prosecutor’s office had earlier warned of criminal prosecution against those who interfered with the vote, a step it said was necessary due to social-media posts “containing calls for an unlimited number of people to simultaneously arrive to participate in uncoordinated mass public events at polling stations in Moscow [at noon on March 17] in order to violate electoral legislation.”
Lawyer Valeria Vetoshkina, who has left the country, told Current Time that if people do not bring posters and do not announce why they came to the polling station at that hour, it would be hard for the authorities to legitimately declare it a “violation.”
But she warned that there were “some basic safety rules that you can follow if you’re worried. The first is not to discuss why you came, just to vote. And secondly, it is better to come without any visual means of agitation: without posters, flags, and so on.”
Ella Pamfilova, head of Russia’s Central Election Commission (TsIK), on March 16 said there had been 20 cases of people attempting to destroy voting sheets by pouring liquids into ballot boxes and eight incidents of people trying to destroy ballots by setting them on fire or by using smoke bombs.
Russians living abroad also took part in the “Noon Against Putin” campaign, with hundreds of people lining up at 12 p.m. outside the Russian embassies in Sidney, Tokyo, Phuket, Dubai, Istanbul, Berlin, Paris, and Yerevan among other capitals.
“It’s not an election. It’s just a fake. And so we’re here to show that not Russians elect the current leader of Russia, that we [are] against him very severely, and that lots of people had to flee their country to be free,” said Anna, a Russian citizen living in Berlin and who gathered outside the embassy in the German capital.
Putin was challenged by Liberal Democratic Party leader Leonid Slutsky, State Duma deputy speaker Vladislav Davankov of the New People party, and State Duma lawmaker Nikolai Kharitonov of the Communist Party, none of whom opposed the war.
The Russian leader had the full resources of the state behind him, including the media, police, state-owned companies, and election officials.
This content originally appeared on News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
-
Vladimir Putin has claimed a fifth presidential term with a landslide victory in a tightly controlled election that has been condemned by the West as neither free nor fair as the Russian leader seeks to prove overwhelming popular support for his full-scale invasion of Ukraine and increasingly repressive policies.
With 99.75 percent of ballots counted, Putin won another six-year term with a post-Soviet record of 87.29 percent of the vote, the Central Elections Committee (TsIK) said on March 18, adding that turnout was also at a “record” level, with 77.44 percent of eligible voters casting ballots.
The 71-year old Putin — who has ruled as either president or prime minister since 2000 — is now set to surpass Soviet dictator Josef Stalin’s nearly 30-year reign to become the longest-serving Russian leader in more than two centuries.
“This election has been based on repression and intimidation,” the European Union’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell told journalists in Brussels on March 18 as the bloc’s foreign ministers gathered to discuss the election, among other issues.
The March 15-17 vote is the first for Putin since he launched his invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 that has killed tens of thousands of Russians and led to a clear break in relations with the West. In holding what has widely been viewed as faux elections, Putin wants to show that he has the nation’s full support, experts said.
The vote was also held in Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine, where hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers are located. Moscow illegally annexed the regions since launching the invasion, though it remains unclear how much of the territory it controls.
The Kremlin’s goal “is to get as many people as possible to sign off on Russia’s war against Ukraine. The idea is to get millions of Russian citizens to retroactively approve the decision Putin single-handedly made two years ago,” Maksim Trudolyubov, a senior fellow at the Kennan Institute, wrote in a note ahead of the vote.
In remarks shortly after he was declared the winner, Putin said the election showed that the nation was “one team.”
But Western leaders condemned the vote, with the White House National Security Council spokesperson saying they “are obviously not free nor fair given how Mr. Putin has imprisoned political opponents and prevented others from running against him.”
British Foreign Secretary David Cameron said “this is not what free and fair elections look like,” adding in his message on X, formerly Twitter, that illegal elections have also been held on occupied Ukrainian territory.
The French Foreign Ministry said Putin’s reelection came amid a wave of repression against civil society. It also praised in a statement the courage of “the many Russian citizens who peacefully protested against this attack on their fundamental political rights.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Putin has become “sick with power” and he is just “simulating” elections.
“This imitation of ‘elections’ has no legitimacy and cannot have any. This person must end up in the dock in The Hague [at the International UN Tribunal for War Crimes],” Zelenskiy said on X.
Putin’s allies were quick to heap praise on the Russian leader for his election success.
China, one of Russia’s most importants allies, congratulated Putin, with Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian saying President Xi Jinping and the Russian leader “will continue to maintain close exchanges, lead the two countries to continue to uphold long-standing good-neighborly friendship, deepen comprehensive strategic coordination.”
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi called Putin’s victory “decisive,” the state news agency IRNA reported.
WATCH: Leading psychiatrists discuss how excessive power can impact brain functioning and what the impulse for total control reveals about the mind and personality traits of authority figures.
Putin was opposed by three relatively unknown, Kremlin-friendly politicians whose campaign was barely noticeable. The main intrigue was whether Russians would heed opposition calls to gather at polling stations at noon on March 17 to silently protest against Putin’s rule.
Russian media had reported in the months leading up to the election that the Kremlin was determined to engineer a victory for Putin that would surpass the 2018 results, when he won 77.5 percent of the vote with a turnout of 67.5 percent.
The Kremlin banned anti-war politician Boris Nadezhdin from the ballot after tens of thousands of voters lined up in the cold to support his candidacy. Nadezhdin threatened to undermine the narrative of overwhelming support for Putin and his war, experts said.
Independent election observers were barred from working at this year’s presidential election for the first time in post-Soviet history, experts said. Russian elections have been notorious for ballot stuffing and other irregularities.
The vote was also held in Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine, where hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers are located.
The United States called the elections neither fair nor free.
‘Noon Against Putin’
With options to express resistance severely limited by the lack of competition and repressive laws, opposition leaders called on voters opposed to Putin to gather near polls at noon to show the Kremlin and the country that they were still a force.
Russia’s opposition movement suffered a serious blow last month when Aleksei Navalny, Putin’s fiercest and most popular critic, died in unclear circumstances in a maximum-security prison in the Arctic where he was serving a 19-year sentence on charges of extremism widely seen as politically motivated.
Long lines formed at polling stations across Russia’s 11 time zones at the designated time for the “Noon Against Putin” protest, including in Novosibirsk, Chita, Yekaterinburg, Perm, and Moscow among other Russian cities.
“We’re not really expecting anything, but I’d somehow like to make a record of this election for myself, tick the box for myself, so, when talking about it later, I could say that I didn’t just sit at home, but came and tried to do something,” said one Russian who came to vote at noon.
“The action has achieved its goals,” Ivan Zhdanov, the head the Anti-Corruption Foundation formerly headed by Navalny, said in a YouTube video. “The action has shown that there is another Russia, there are people who stand against Putin.”
The Moscow prosecutor’s office had earlier warned of criminal prosecution against those who interfered with the vote, a step it said was necessary due to social-media posts “containing calls for an unlimited number of people to simultaneously arrive to participate in uncoordinated mass public events at polling stations in Moscow [at noon on March 17] in order to violate electoral legislation.”
Lawyer Valeria Vetoshkina, who has left the country, told Current Time that if people do not bring posters and do not announce why they came to the polling station at that hour, it would be hard for the authorities to legitimately declare it a “violation.”
But she warned that there were “some basic safety rules that you can follow if you’re worried. The first is not to discuss why you came, just to vote. And secondly, it is better to come without any visual means of agitation: without posters, flags, and so on.”
Ella Pamfilova, head of Russia’s Central Election Commission (TsIK), on March 16 said there had been 20 cases of people attempting to destroy voting sheets by pouring liquids into ballot boxes and eight incidents of people trying to destroy ballots by setting them on fire or by using smoke bombs.
Russians living abroad also took part in the “Noon Against Putin” campaign, with hundreds of people lining up at 12 p.m. outside the Russian embassies in Sidney, Tokyo, Phuket, Dubai, Istanbul, Berlin, Paris, and Yerevan among other capitals.
“It’s not an election. It’s just a fake. And so we’re here to show that not Russians elect the current leader of Russia, that we [are] against him very severely, and that lots of people had to flee their country to be free,” said Anna, a Russian citizen living in Berlin and who gathered outside the embassy in the German capital.
Putin was challenged by Liberal Democratic Party leader Leonid Slutsky, State Duma deputy speaker Vladislav Davankov of the New People party, and State Duma lawmaker Nikolai Kharitonov of the Communist Party, none of whom opposed the war.
The Russian leader had the full resources of the state behind him, including the media, police, state-owned companies, and election officials.
This content originally appeared on News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
-
Vladimir Putin has claimed a fifth presidential term with a landslide victory in a tightly controlled election that has been condemned by the West as neither free nor fair as the Russian leader seeks to prove overwhelming popular support for his full-scale invasion of Ukraine and increasingly repressive policies.
With 99.75 percent of ballots counted, Putin won another six-year term with a post-Soviet record of 87.29 percent of the vote, the Central Elections Committee (TsIK) said on March 18, adding that turnout was also at a “record” level, with 77.44 percent of eligible voters casting ballots.
The 71-year old Putin — who has ruled as either president or prime minister since 2000 — is now set to surpass Soviet dictator Josef Stalin’s nearly 30-year reign to become the longest-serving Russian leader in more than two centuries.
“This election has been based on repression and intimidation,” the European Union’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell told journalists in Brussels on March 18 as the bloc’s foreign ministers gathered to discuss the election, among other issues.
The March 15-17 vote is the first for Putin since he launched his invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 that has killed tens of thousands of Russians and led to a clear break in relations with the West. In holding what has widely been viewed as faux elections, Putin wants to show that he has the nation’s full support, experts said.
The vote was also held in Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine, where hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers are located. Moscow illegally annexed the regions since launching the invasion, though it remains unclear how much of the territory it controls.
The Kremlin’s goal “is to get as many people as possible to sign off on Russia’s war against Ukraine. The idea is to get millions of Russian citizens to retroactively approve the decision Putin single-handedly made two years ago,” Maksim Trudolyubov, a senior fellow at the Kennan Institute, wrote in a note ahead of the vote.
In remarks shortly after he was declared the winner, Putin said the election showed that the nation was “one team.”
But Western leaders condemned the vote, with the White House National Security Council spokesperson saying they “are obviously not free nor fair given how Mr. Putin has imprisoned political opponents and prevented others from running against him.”
British Foreign Secretary David Cameron said “this is not what free and fair elections look like,” adding in his message on X, formerly Twitter, that illegal elections have also been held on occupied Ukrainian territory.
The French Foreign Ministry said Putin’s reelection came amid a wave of repression against civil society. It also praised in a statement the courage of “the many Russian citizens who peacefully protested against this attack on their fundamental political rights.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Putin has become “sick with power” and he is just “simulating” elections.
“This imitation of ‘elections’ has no legitimacy and cannot have any. This person must end up in the dock in The Hague [at the International UN Tribunal for War Crimes],” Zelenskiy said on X.
Putin’s allies were quick to heap praise on the Russian leader for his election success.
China, one of Russia’s most importants allies, congratulated Putin, with Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian saying President Xi Jinping and the Russian leader “will continue to maintain close exchanges, lead the two countries to continue to uphold long-standing good-neighborly friendship, deepen comprehensive strategic coordination.”
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi called Putin’s victory “decisive,” the state news agency IRNA reported.
WATCH: Leading psychiatrists discuss how excessive power can impact brain functioning and what the impulse for total control reveals about the mind and personality traits of authority figures.
Putin was opposed by three relatively unknown, Kremlin-friendly politicians whose campaign was barely noticeable. The main intrigue was whether Russians would heed opposition calls to gather at polling stations at noon on March 17 to silently protest against Putin’s rule.
Russian media had reported in the months leading up to the election that the Kremlin was determined to engineer a victory for Putin that would surpass the 2018 results, when he won 77.5 percent of the vote with a turnout of 67.5 percent.
The Kremlin banned anti-war politician Boris Nadezhdin from the ballot after tens of thousands of voters lined up in the cold to support his candidacy. Nadezhdin threatened to undermine the narrative of overwhelming support for Putin and his war, experts said.
Independent election observers were barred from working at this year’s presidential election for the first time in post-Soviet history, experts said. Russian elections have been notorious for ballot stuffing and other irregularities.
The vote was also held in Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine, where hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers are located.
The United States called the elections neither fair nor free.
‘Noon Against Putin’
With options to express resistance severely limited by the lack of competition and repressive laws, opposition leaders called on voters opposed to Putin to gather near polls at noon to show the Kremlin and the country that they were still a force.
Russia’s opposition movement suffered a serious blow last month when Aleksei Navalny, Putin’s fiercest and most popular critic, died in unclear circumstances in a maximum-security prison in the Arctic where he was serving a 19-year sentence on charges of extremism widely seen as politically motivated.
Long lines formed at polling stations across Russia’s 11 time zones at the designated time for the “Noon Against Putin” protest, including in Novosibirsk, Chita, Yekaterinburg, Perm, and Moscow among other Russian cities.
“We’re not really expecting anything, but I’d somehow like to make a record of this election for myself, tick the box for myself, so, when talking about it later, I could say that I didn’t just sit at home, but came and tried to do something,” said one Russian who came to vote at noon.
“The action has achieved its goals,” Ivan Zhdanov, the head the Anti-Corruption Foundation formerly headed by Navalny, said in a YouTube video. “The action has shown that there is another Russia, there are people who stand against Putin.”
The Moscow prosecutor’s office had earlier warned of criminal prosecution against those who interfered with the vote, a step it said was necessary due to social-media posts “containing calls for an unlimited number of people to simultaneously arrive to participate in uncoordinated mass public events at polling stations in Moscow [at noon on March 17] in order to violate electoral legislation.”
Lawyer Valeria Vetoshkina, who has left the country, told Current Time that if people do not bring posters and do not announce why they came to the polling station at that hour, it would be hard for the authorities to legitimately declare it a “violation.”
But she warned that there were “some basic safety rules that you can follow if you’re worried. The first is not to discuss why you came, just to vote. And secondly, it is better to come without any visual means of agitation: without posters, flags, and so on.”
Ella Pamfilova, head of Russia’s Central Election Commission (TsIK), on March 16 said there had been 20 cases of people attempting to destroy voting sheets by pouring liquids into ballot boxes and eight incidents of people trying to destroy ballots by setting them on fire or by using smoke bombs.
Russians living abroad also took part in the “Noon Against Putin” campaign, with hundreds of people lining up at 12 p.m. outside the Russian embassies in Sidney, Tokyo, Phuket, Dubai, Istanbul, Berlin, Paris, and Yerevan among other capitals.
“It’s not an election. It’s just a fake. And so we’re here to show that not Russians elect the current leader of Russia, that we [are] against him very severely, and that lots of people had to flee their country to be free,” said Anna, a Russian citizen living in Berlin and who gathered outside the embassy in the German capital.
Putin was challenged by Liberal Democratic Party leader Leonid Slutsky, State Duma deputy speaker Vladislav Davankov of the New People party, and State Duma lawmaker Nikolai Kharitonov of the Communist Party, none of whom opposed the war.
The Russian leader had the full resources of the state behind him, including the media, police, state-owned companies, and election officials.
This content originally appeared on News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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Vladimir Putin has claimed a fifth presidential term with a landslide victory in a tightly controlled election that has been condemned by the West as neither free nor fair as the Russian leader seeks to prove overwhelming popular support for his full-scale invasion of Ukraine and increasingly repressive policies.
With 99.75 percent of ballots counted, Putin won another six-year term with a post-Soviet record of 87.29 percent of the vote, the Central Elections Committee (TsIK) said on March 18, adding that turnout was also at a “record” level, with 77.44 percent of eligible voters casting ballots.
The 71-year old Putin — who has ruled as either president or prime minister since 2000 — is now set to surpass Soviet dictator Josef Stalin’s nearly 30-year reign to become the longest-serving Russian leader in more than two centuries.
“This election has been based on repression and intimidation,” the European Union’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell told journalists in Brussels on March 18 as the bloc’s foreign ministers gathered to discuss the election, among other issues.
The March 15-17 vote is the first for Putin since he launched his invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 that has killed tens of thousands of Russians and led to a clear break in relations with the West. In holding what has widely been viewed as faux elections, Putin wants to show that he has the nation’s full support, experts said.
The vote was also held in Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine, where hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers are located. Moscow illegally annexed the regions since launching the invasion, though it remains unclear how much of the territory it controls.
The Kremlin’s goal “is to get as many people as possible to sign off on Russia’s war against Ukraine. The idea is to get millions of Russian citizens to retroactively approve the decision Putin single-handedly made two years ago,” Maksim Trudolyubov, a senior fellow at the Kennan Institute, wrote in a note ahead of the vote.
In remarks shortly after he was declared the winner, Putin said the election showed that the nation was “one team.”
But Western leaders condemned the vote, with the White House National Security Council spokesperson saying they “are obviously not free nor fair given how Mr. Putin has imprisoned political opponents and prevented others from running against him.”
British Foreign Secretary David Cameron said “this is not what free and fair elections look like,” adding in his message on X, formerly Twitter, that illegal elections have also been held on occupied Ukrainian territory.
The French Foreign Ministry said Putin’s reelection came amid a wave of repression against civil society. It also praised in a statement the courage of “the many Russian citizens who peacefully protested against this attack on their fundamental political rights.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Putin has become “sick with power” and he is just “simulating” elections.
“This imitation of ‘elections’ has no legitimacy and cannot have any. This person must end up in the dock in The Hague [at the International UN Tribunal for War Crimes],” Zelenskiy said on X.
Putin’s allies were quick to heap praise on the Russian leader for his election success.
China, one of Russia’s most importants allies, congratulated Putin, with Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian saying President Xi Jinping and the Russian leader “will continue to maintain close exchanges, lead the two countries to continue to uphold long-standing good-neighborly friendship, deepen comprehensive strategic coordination.”
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi called Putin’s victory “decisive,” the state news agency IRNA reported.
WATCH: Leading psychiatrists discuss how excessive power can impact brain functioning and what the impulse for total control reveals about the mind and personality traits of authority figures.
Putin was opposed by three relatively unknown, Kremlin-friendly politicians whose campaign was barely noticeable. The main intrigue was whether Russians would heed opposition calls to gather at polling stations at noon on March 17 to silently protest against Putin’s rule.
Russian media had reported in the months leading up to the election that the Kremlin was determined to engineer a victory for Putin that would surpass the 2018 results, when he won 77.5 percent of the vote with a turnout of 67.5 percent.
The Kremlin banned anti-war politician Boris Nadezhdin from the ballot after tens of thousands of voters lined up in the cold to support his candidacy. Nadezhdin threatened to undermine the narrative of overwhelming support for Putin and his war, experts said.
Independent election observers were barred from working at this year’s presidential election for the first time in post-Soviet history, experts said. Russian elections have been notorious for ballot stuffing and other irregularities.
The vote was also held in Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine, where hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers are located.
The United States called the elections neither fair nor free.
‘Noon Against Putin’
With options to express resistance severely limited by the lack of competition and repressive laws, opposition leaders called on voters opposed to Putin to gather near polls at noon to show the Kremlin and the country that they were still a force.
Russia’s opposition movement suffered a serious blow last month when Aleksei Navalny, Putin’s fiercest and most popular critic, died in unclear circumstances in a maximum-security prison in the Arctic where he was serving a 19-year sentence on charges of extremism widely seen as politically motivated.
Long lines formed at polling stations across Russia’s 11 time zones at the designated time for the “Noon Against Putin” protest, including in Novosibirsk, Chita, Yekaterinburg, Perm, and Moscow among other Russian cities.
“We’re not really expecting anything, but I’d somehow like to make a record of this election for myself, tick the box for myself, so, when talking about it later, I could say that I didn’t just sit at home, but came and tried to do something,” said one Russian who came to vote at noon.
“The action has achieved its goals,” Ivan Zhdanov, the head the Anti-Corruption Foundation formerly headed by Navalny, said in a YouTube video. “The action has shown that there is another Russia, there are people who stand against Putin.”
The Moscow prosecutor’s office had earlier warned of criminal prosecution against those who interfered with the vote, a step it said was necessary due to social-media posts “containing calls for an unlimited number of people to simultaneously arrive to participate in uncoordinated mass public events at polling stations in Moscow [at noon on March 17] in order to violate electoral legislation.”
Lawyer Valeria Vetoshkina, who has left the country, told Current Time that if people do not bring posters and do not announce why they came to the polling station at that hour, it would be hard for the authorities to legitimately declare it a “violation.”
But she warned that there were “some basic safety rules that you can follow if you’re worried. The first is not to discuss why you came, just to vote. And secondly, it is better to come without any visual means of agitation: without posters, flags, and so on.”
Ella Pamfilova, head of Russia’s Central Election Commission (TsIK), on March 16 said there had been 20 cases of people attempting to destroy voting sheets by pouring liquids into ballot boxes and eight incidents of people trying to destroy ballots by setting them on fire or by using smoke bombs.
Russians living abroad also took part in the “Noon Against Putin” campaign, with hundreds of people lining up at 12 p.m. outside the Russian embassies in Sidney, Tokyo, Phuket, Dubai, Istanbul, Berlin, Paris, and Yerevan among other capitals.
“It’s not an election. It’s just a fake. And so we’re here to show that not Russians elect the current leader of Russia, that we [are] against him very severely, and that lots of people had to flee their country to be free,” said Anna, a Russian citizen living in Berlin and who gathered outside the embassy in the German capital.
Putin was challenged by Liberal Democratic Party leader Leonid Slutsky, State Duma deputy speaker Vladislav Davankov of the New People party, and State Duma lawmaker Nikolai Kharitonov of the Communist Party, none of whom opposed the war.
The Russian leader had the full resources of the state behind him, including the media, police, state-owned companies, and election officials.
This content originally appeared on News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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The Iranian government “bears responsibility” for the physical violence that led to the death of Mahsa Amini, the 22-year-old Iranian-Kurdish woman who died in police custody in 2022, and for the brutal crackdown on largely peaceful street protests that followed, a report by a United Nations fact-finding mission says.
The report, issued on March 8 by the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Islamic Republic of Iran, said the mission “has established the existence of evidence of trauma to Ms. Amini’s body, inflicted while in the custody of the morality police.”
It said the mission found the “physical violence in custody led to Ms. Amini’s unlawful death…. On that basis, the state bears responsibility for her unlawful death.”
Amini was arrested in Tehran on September 13, 2022, while visiting the Iranian capital with her family. She was detained by Iran’s so-called “morality police” for allegedly improperly wearing her hijab, or hair-covering head scarf. Within hours of her detention, she was hospitalized in a coma and died on September 16.
Her family has denied that Amini suffered from a preexisting health condition that may have contributed to her death, as claimed by the Iranian authorities, and her father has cited eyewitnesses as saying she was beaten while en route to a detention facility.
The fact-finding report said the action “emphasizes the arbitrary character of Ms. Amini’s arrest and detention, which were based on laws and policies governing the mandatory hijab, which fundamentally discriminate against women and girls and are not permissible under international human rights law.”
“Those laws and policies violate the rights to freedom of expression, freedom of religion or belief, and the autonomy of women and girls. Ms. Amini’s arrest and detention, preceding her death in custody, constituted a violation of her right to liberty of person,” it said.
The New York-based Center for Human Rights in Iran hailed the findings and said they represented clear signs of “crimes against humanity.”
“The Islamic republic’s violent repression of peaceful dissent and severe discrimination against women and girls in Iran has been confirmed as constituting nothing short of crimes against humanity,” said Hadi Ghaemi, executive director of the center.
“The government’s brutal crackdown on the Women, Life, Freedom protests has seen a litany of atrocities that include extrajudicial killings, torture, and rape. These violations disproportionately affect the most vulnerable in society, women, children, and minority groups,” he added.
The report also said the Iranian government failed to “comply with its duty” to investigate the woman’s death promptly.
“Most notably, judicial harassment and intimidation were aimed at her family in order to silence them and preempt them from seeking legal redress. Some family members faced arbitrary arrest, while the family’s lawyer, Saleh Nikbaht, and three journalists, Niloofar Hamedi, Elahe Mohammadi, and Nazila Maroufian, who reported on Ms. Amini’s death were arrested, prosecuted, and sentenced to imprisonment,” it added.
Amini’s death sparked mass protests, beginning in her home town of Saghez, then spreading around the country, and ultimately posed one of the biggest threats to Iran’s clerical establishment since the foundation of the Islamic republic in 1979. At least 500 people were reported killed in the government’s crackdown on demonstrators.
The UN report said “violations and crimes” under international law committed in the context of the Women, Life, Freedom protests include “extrajudicial and unlawful killings and murder, unnecessary and disproportionate use of force, arbitrary deprivation of liberty, torture, rape, enforced disappearances, and gender persecution.
“The violent repression of peaceful protests and pervasive institutional discrimination against women and girls has led to serious human rights violations by the government of Iran, many amounting to crimes against humanity,” the report said.
The UN mission acknowledged that some state security forces were killed and injured during the demonstrations, but said it found that the majority of protests were peaceful.
The mission stems from the UN Human Rights Council’s mandate to the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Islamic Republic of Iran on November 24, 2022, to investigate alleged human rights violations in Iran related to the protests that followed Amini’s death.
This content originally appeared on News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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Vladimir Putin has claimed a fifth presidential term with a landslide victory in a tightly controlled election that has been condemned by the West as neither free nor fair as the Russian leader seeks to prove overwhelming popular support for his full-scale invasion of Ukraine and increasingly repressive policies.
With 99.75 percent of ballots counted, Putin won another six-year term with a post-Soviet record of 87.29 percent of the vote, the Central Elections Committee (TsIK) said on March 18, adding that turnout was also at a “record” level, with 77.44 percent of eligible voters casting ballots.
The 71-year old Putin — who has ruled as either president or prime minister since 2000 — is now set to surpass Soviet dictator Josef Stalin’s nearly 30-year reign to become the longest-serving Russian leader in more than two centuries.
“This election has been based on repression and intimidation,” the European Union’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell told journalists in Brussels on March 18 as the bloc’s foreign ministers gathered to discuss the election, among other issues.
The March 15-17 vote is the first for Putin since he launched his invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 that has killed tens of thousands of Russians and led to a clear break in relations with the West. In holding what has widely been viewed as faux elections, Putin wants to show that he has the nation’s full support, experts said.
The vote was also held in Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine, where hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers are located. Moscow illegally annexed the regions since launching the invasion, though it remains unclear how much of the territory it controls.
The Kremlin’s goal “is to get as many people as possible to sign off on Russia’s war against Ukraine. The idea is to get millions of Russian citizens to retroactively approve the decision Putin single-handedly made two years ago,” Maksim Trudolyubov, a senior fellow at the Kennan Institute, wrote in a note ahead of the vote.
In remarks shortly after he was declared the winner, Putin said the election showed that the nation was “one team.”
But Western leaders condemned the vote, with the White House National Security Council spokesperson saying they “are obviously not free nor fair given how Mr. Putin has imprisoned political opponents and prevented others from running against him.”
British Foreign Secretary David Cameron said “this is not what free and fair elections look like,” adding in his message on X, formerly Twitter, that illegal elections have also been held on occupied Ukrainian territory.
The French Foreign Ministry said Putin’s reelection came amid a wave of repression against civil society. It also praised in a statement the courage of “the many Russian citizens who peacefully protested against this attack on their fundamental political rights.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Putin has become “sick with power” and he is just “simulating” elections.
“This imitation of ‘elections’ has no legitimacy and cannot have any. This person must end up in the dock in The Hague [at the International UN Tribunal for War Crimes],” Zelenskiy said on X.
Putin’s allies were quick to heap praise on the Russian leader for his election success.
China, one of Russia’s most importants allies, congratulated Putin, with Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian saying President Xi Jinping and the Russian leader “will continue to maintain close exchanges, lead the two countries to continue to uphold long-standing good-neighborly friendship, deepen comprehensive strategic coordination.”
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi called Putin’s victory “decisive,” the state news agency IRNA reported.
WATCH: Leading psychiatrists discuss how excessive power can impact brain functioning and what the impulse for total control reveals about the mind and personality traits of authority figures.
Putin was opposed by three relatively unknown, Kremlin-friendly politicians whose campaign was barely noticeable. The main intrigue was whether Russians would heed opposition calls to gather at polling stations at noon on March 17 to silently protest against Putin’s rule.
Russian media had reported in the months leading up to the election that the Kremlin was determined to engineer a victory for Putin that would surpass the 2018 results, when he won 77.5 percent of the vote with a turnout of 67.5 percent.
The Kremlin banned anti-war politician Boris Nadezhdin from the ballot after tens of thousands of voters lined up in the cold to support his candidacy. Nadezhdin threatened to undermine the narrative of overwhelming support for Putin and his war, experts said.
Independent election observers were barred from working at this year’s presidential election for the first time in post-Soviet history, experts said. Russian elections have been notorious for ballot stuffing and other irregularities.
The vote was also held in Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine, where hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers are located.
The United States called the elections neither fair nor free.
‘Noon Against Putin’
With options to express resistance severely limited by the lack of competition and repressive laws, opposition leaders called on voters opposed to Putin to gather near polls at noon to show the Kremlin and the country that they were still a force.
Russia’s opposition movement suffered a serious blow last month when Aleksei Navalny, Putin’s fiercest and most popular critic, died in unclear circumstances in a maximum-security prison in the Arctic where he was serving a 19-year sentence on charges of extremism widely seen as politically motivated.
Long lines formed at polling stations across Russia’s 11 time zones at the designated time for the “Noon Against Putin” protest, including in Novosibirsk, Chita, Yekaterinburg, Perm, and Moscow among other Russian cities.
“We’re not really expecting anything, but I’d somehow like to make a record of this election for myself, tick the box for myself, so, when talking about it later, I could say that I didn’t just sit at home, but came and tried to do something,” said one Russian who came to vote at noon.
“The action has achieved its goals,” Ivan Zhdanov, the head the Anti-Corruption Foundation formerly headed by Navalny, said in a YouTube video. “The action has shown that there is another Russia, there are people who stand against Putin.”
The Moscow prosecutor’s office had earlier warned of criminal prosecution against those who interfered with the vote, a step it said was necessary due to social-media posts “containing calls for an unlimited number of people to simultaneously arrive to participate in uncoordinated mass public events at polling stations in Moscow [at noon on March 17] in order to violate electoral legislation.”
Lawyer Valeria Vetoshkina, who has left the country, told Current Time that if people do not bring posters and do not announce why they came to the polling station at that hour, it would be hard for the authorities to legitimately declare it a “violation.”
But she warned that there were “some basic safety rules that you can follow if you’re worried. The first is not to discuss why you came, just to vote. And secondly, it is better to come without any visual means of agitation: without posters, flags, and so on.”
Ella Pamfilova, head of Russia’s Central Election Commission (TsIK), on March 16 said there had been 20 cases of people attempting to destroy voting sheets by pouring liquids into ballot boxes and eight incidents of people trying to destroy ballots by setting them on fire or by using smoke bombs.
Russians living abroad also took part in the “Noon Against Putin” campaign, with hundreds of people lining up at 12 p.m. outside the Russian embassies in Sidney, Tokyo, Phuket, Dubai, Istanbul, Berlin, Paris, and Yerevan among other capitals.
“It’s not an election. It’s just a fake. And so we’re here to show that not Russians elect the current leader of Russia, that we [are] against him very severely, and that lots of people had to flee their country to be free,” said Anna, a Russian citizen living in Berlin and who gathered outside the embassy in the German capital.
Putin was challenged by Liberal Democratic Party leader Leonid Slutsky, State Duma deputy speaker Vladislav Davankov of the New People party, and State Duma lawmaker Nikolai Kharitonov of the Communist Party, none of whom opposed the war.
The Russian leader had the full resources of the state behind him, including the media, police, state-owned companies, and election officials.
This content originally appeared on News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
-
Vladimir Putin has claimed a fifth presidential term with a landslide victory in a tightly controlled election that has been condemned by the West as neither free nor fair as the Russian leader seeks to prove overwhelming popular support for his full-scale invasion of Ukraine and increasingly repressive policies.
With 99.75 percent of ballots counted, Putin won another six-year term with a post-Soviet record of 87.29 percent of the vote, the Central Elections Committee (TsIK) said on March 18, adding that turnout was also at a “record” level, with 77.44 percent of eligible voters casting ballots.
The 71-year old Putin — who has ruled as either president or prime minister since 2000 — is now set to surpass Soviet dictator Josef Stalin’s nearly 30-year reign to become the longest-serving Russian leader in more than two centuries.
“This election has been based on repression and intimidation,” the European Union’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell told journalists in Brussels on March 18 as the bloc’s foreign ministers gathered to discuss the election, among other issues.
The March 15-17 vote is the first for Putin since he launched his invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 that has killed tens of thousands of Russians and led to a clear break in relations with the West. In holding what has widely been viewed as faux elections, Putin wants to show that he has the nation’s full support, experts said.
The vote was also held in Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine, where hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers are located. Moscow illegally annexed the regions since launching the invasion, though it remains unclear how much of the territory it controls.
The Kremlin’s goal “is to get as many people as possible to sign off on Russia’s war against Ukraine. The idea is to get millions of Russian citizens to retroactively approve the decision Putin single-handedly made two years ago,” Maksim Trudolyubov, a senior fellow at the Kennan Institute, wrote in a note ahead of the vote.
In remarks shortly after he was declared the winner, Putin said the election showed that the nation was “one team.”
But Western leaders condemned the vote, with the White House National Security Council spokesperson saying they “are obviously not free nor fair given how Mr. Putin has imprisoned political opponents and prevented others from running against him.”
British Foreign Secretary David Cameron said “this is not what free and fair elections look like,” adding in his message on X, formerly Twitter, that illegal elections have also been held on occupied Ukrainian territory.
The French Foreign Ministry said Putin’s reelection came amid a wave of repression against civil society. It also praised in a statement the courage of “the many Russian citizens who peacefully protested against this attack on their fundamental political rights.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Putin has become “sick with power” and he is just “simulating” elections.
“This imitation of ‘elections’ has no legitimacy and cannot have any. This person must end up in the dock in The Hague [at the International UN Tribunal for War Crimes],” Zelenskiy said on X.
Putin’s allies were quick to heap praise on the Russian leader for his election success.
China, one of Russia’s most importants allies, congratulated Putin, with Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian saying President Xi Jinping and the Russian leader “will continue to maintain close exchanges, lead the two countries to continue to uphold long-standing good-neighborly friendship, deepen comprehensive strategic coordination.”
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi called Putin’s victory “decisive,” the state news agency IRNA reported.
WATCH: Leading psychiatrists discuss how excessive power can impact brain functioning and what the impulse for total control reveals about the mind and personality traits of authority figures.
Putin was opposed by three relatively unknown, Kremlin-friendly politicians whose campaign was barely noticeable. The main intrigue was whether Russians would heed opposition calls to gather at polling stations at noon on March 17 to silently protest against Putin’s rule.
Russian media had reported in the months leading up to the election that the Kremlin was determined to engineer a victory for Putin that would surpass the 2018 results, when he won 77.5 percent of the vote with a turnout of 67.5 percent.
The Kremlin banned anti-war politician Boris Nadezhdin from the ballot after tens of thousands of voters lined up in the cold to support his candidacy. Nadezhdin threatened to undermine the narrative of overwhelming support for Putin and his war, experts said.
Independent election observers were barred from working at this year’s presidential election for the first time in post-Soviet history, experts said. Russian elections have been notorious for ballot stuffing and other irregularities.
The vote was also held in Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine, where hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers are located.
The United States called the elections neither fair nor free.
‘Noon Against Putin’
With options to express resistance severely limited by the lack of competition and repressive laws, opposition leaders called on voters opposed to Putin to gather near polls at noon to show the Kremlin and the country that they were still a force.
Russia’s opposition movement suffered a serious blow last month when Aleksei Navalny, Putin’s fiercest and most popular critic, died in unclear circumstances in a maximum-security prison in the Arctic where he was serving a 19-year sentence on charges of extremism widely seen as politically motivated.
Long lines formed at polling stations across Russia’s 11 time zones at the designated time for the “Noon Against Putin” protest, including in Novosibirsk, Chita, Yekaterinburg, Perm, and Moscow among other Russian cities.
“We’re not really expecting anything, but I’d somehow like to make a record of this election for myself, tick the box for myself, so, when talking about it later, I could say that I didn’t just sit at home, but came and tried to do something,” said one Russian who came to vote at noon.
“The action has achieved its goals,” Ivan Zhdanov, the head the Anti-Corruption Foundation formerly headed by Navalny, said in a YouTube video. “The action has shown that there is another Russia, there are people who stand against Putin.”
The Moscow prosecutor’s office had earlier warned of criminal prosecution against those who interfered with the vote, a step it said was necessary due to social-media posts “containing calls for an unlimited number of people to simultaneously arrive to participate in uncoordinated mass public events at polling stations in Moscow [at noon on March 17] in order to violate electoral legislation.”
Lawyer Valeria Vetoshkina, who has left the country, told Current Time that if people do not bring posters and do not announce why they came to the polling station at that hour, it would be hard for the authorities to legitimately declare it a “violation.”
But she warned that there were “some basic safety rules that you can follow if you’re worried. The first is not to discuss why you came, just to vote. And secondly, it is better to come without any visual means of agitation: without posters, flags, and so on.”
Ella Pamfilova, head of Russia’s Central Election Commission (TsIK), on March 16 said there had been 20 cases of people attempting to destroy voting sheets by pouring liquids into ballot boxes and eight incidents of people trying to destroy ballots by setting them on fire or by using smoke bombs.
Russians living abroad also took part in the “Noon Against Putin” campaign, with hundreds of people lining up at 12 p.m. outside the Russian embassies in Sidney, Tokyo, Phuket, Dubai, Istanbul, Berlin, Paris, and Yerevan among other capitals.
“It’s not an election. It’s just a fake. And so we’re here to show that not Russians elect the current leader of Russia, that we [are] against him very severely, and that lots of people had to flee their country to be free,” said Anna, a Russian citizen living in Berlin and who gathered outside the embassy in the German capital.
Putin was challenged by Liberal Democratic Party leader Leonid Slutsky, State Duma deputy speaker Vladislav Davankov of the New People party, and State Duma lawmaker Nikolai Kharitonov of the Communist Party, none of whom opposed the war.
The Russian leader had the full resources of the state behind him, including the media, police, state-owned companies, and election officials.
This content originally appeared on News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
-
Vladimir Putin has claimed a fifth presidential term with a landslide victory in a tightly controlled election that has been condemned by the West as neither free nor fair as the Russian leader seeks to prove overwhelming popular support for his full-scale invasion of Ukraine and increasingly repressive policies.
With 99.75 percent of ballots counted, Putin won another six-year term with a post-Soviet record of 87.29 percent of the vote, the Central Elections Committee (TsIK) said on March 18, adding that turnout was also at a “record” level, with 77.44 percent of eligible voters casting ballots.
The 71-year old Putin — who has ruled as either president or prime minister since 2000 — is now set to surpass Soviet dictator Josef Stalin’s nearly 30-year reign to become the longest-serving Russian leader in more than two centuries.
“This election has been based on repression and intimidation,” the European Union’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell told journalists in Brussels on March 18 as the bloc’s foreign ministers gathered to discuss the election, among other issues.
The March 15-17 vote is the first for Putin since he launched his invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 that has killed tens of thousands of Russians and led to a clear break in relations with the West. In holding what has widely been viewed as faux elections, Putin wants to show that he has the nation’s full support, experts said.
The vote was also held in Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine, where hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers are located. Moscow illegally annexed the regions since launching the invasion, though it remains unclear how much of the territory it controls.
The Kremlin’s goal “is to get as many people as possible to sign off on Russia’s war against Ukraine. The idea is to get millions of Russian citizens to retroactively approve the decision Putin single-handedly made two years ago,” Maksim Trudolyubov, a senior fellow at the Kennan Institute, wrote in a note ahead of the vote.
In remarks shortly after he was declared the winner, Putin said the election showed that the nation was “one team.”
But Western leaders condemned the vote, with the White House National Security Council spokesperson saying they “are obviously not free nor fair given how Mr. Putin has imprisoned political opponents and prevented others from running against him.”
British Foreign Secretary David Cameron said “this is not what free and fair elections look like,” adding in his message on X, formerly Twitter, that illegal elections have also been held on occupied Ukrainian territory.
The French Foreign Ministry said Putin’s reelection came amid a wave of repression against civil society. It also praised in a statement the courage of “the many Russian citizens who peacefully protested against this attack on their fundamental political rights.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Putin has become “sick with power” and he is just “simulating” elections.
“This imitation of ‘elections’ has no legitimacy and cannot have any. This person must end up in the dock in The Hague [at the International UN Tribunal for War Crimes],” Zelenskiy said on X.
Putin’s allies were quick to heap praise on the Russian leader for his election success.
China, one of Russia’s most importants allies, congratulated Putin, with Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian saying President Xi Jinping and the Russian leader “will continue to maintain close exchanges, lead the two countries to continue to uphold long-standing good-neighborly friendship, deepen comprehensive strategic coordination.”
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi called Putin’s victory “decisive,” the state news agency IRNA reported.
WATCH: Leading psychiatrists discuss how excessive power can impact brain functioning and what the impulse for total control reveals about the mind and personality traits of authority figures.
Putin was opposed by three relatively unknown, Kremlin-friendly politicians whose campaign was barely noticeable. The main intrigue was whether Russians would heed opposition calls to gather at polling stations at noon on March 17 to silently protest against Putin’s rule.
Russian media had reported in the months leading up to the election that the Kremlin was determined to engineer a victory for Putin that would surpass the 2018 results, when he won 77.5 percent of the vote with a turnout of 67.5 percent.
The Kremlin banned anti-war politician Boris Nadezhdin from the ballot after tens of thousands of voters lined up in the cold to support his candidacy. Nadezhdin threatened to undermine the narrative of overwhelming support for Putin and his war, experts said.
Independent election observers were barred from working at this year’s presidential election for the first time in post-Soviet history, experts said. Russian elections have been notorious for ballot stuffing and other irregularities.
The vote was also held in Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine, where hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers are located.
The United States called the elections neither fair nor free.
‘Noon Against Putin’
With options to express resistance severely limited by the lack of competition and repressive laws, opposition leaders called on voters opposed to Putin to gather near polls at noon to show the Kremlin and the country that they were still a force.
Russia’s opposition movement suffered a serious blow last month when Aleksei Navalny, Putin’s fiercest and most popular critic, died in unclear circumstances in a maximum-security prison in the Arctic where he was serving a 19-year sentence on charges of extremism widely seen as politically motivated.
Long lines formed at polling stations across Russia’s 11 time zones at the designated time for the “Noon Against Putin” protest, including in Novosibirsk, Chita, Yekaterinburg, Perm, and Moscow among other Russian cities.
“We’re not really expecting anything, but I’d somehow like to make a record of this election for myself, tick the box for myself, so, when talking about it later, I could say that I didn’t just sit at home, but came and tried to do something,” said one Russian who came to vote at noon.
“The action has achieved its goals,” Ivan Zhdanov, the head the Anti-Corruption Foundation formerly headed by Navalny, said in a YouTube video. “The action has shown that there is another Russia, there are people who stand against Putin.”
The Moscow prosecutor’s office had earlier warned of criminal prosecution against those who interfered with the vote, a step it said was necessary due to social-media posts “containing calls for an unlimited number of people to simultaneously arrive to participate in uncoordinated mass public events at polling stations in Moscow [at noon on March 17] in order to violate electoral legislation.”
Lawyer Valeria Vetoshkina, who has left the country, told Current Time that if people do not bring posters and do not announce why they came to the polling station at that hour, it would be hard for the authorities to legitimately declare it a “violation.”
But she warned that there were “some basic safety rules that you can follow if you’re worried. The first is not to discuss why you came, just to vote. And secondly, it is better to come without any visual means of agitation: without posters, flags, and so on.”
Ella Pamfilova, head of Russia’s Central Election Commission (TsIK), on March 16 said there had been 20 cases of people attempting to destroy voting sheets by pouring liquids into ballot boxes and eight incidents of people trying to destroy ballots by setting them on fire or by using smoke bombs.
Russians living abroad also took part in the “Noon Against Putin” campaign, with hundreds of people lining up at 12 p.m. outside the Russian embassies in Sidney, Tokyo, Phuket, Dubai, Istanbul, Berlin, Paris, and Yerevan among other capitals.
“It’s not an election. It’s just a fake. And so we’re here to show that not Russians elect the current leader of Russia, that we [are] against him very severely, and that lots of people had to flee their country to be free,” said Anna, a Russian citizen living in Berlin and who gathered outside the embassy in the German capital.
Putin was challenged by Liberal Democratic Party leader Leonid Slutsky, State Duma deputy speaker Vladislav Davankov of the New People party, and State Duma lawmaker Nikolai Kharitonov of the Communist Party, none of whom opposed the war.
The Russian leader had the full resources of the state behind him, including the media, police, state-owned companies, and election officials.
This content originally appeared on News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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Vladimir Putin has claimed a fifth presidential term with a landslide victory in a tightly controlled election that has been condemned by the West as neither free nor fair as the Russian leader seeks to prove overwhelming popular support for his full-scale invasion of Ukraine and increasingly repressive policies.
With 99.75 percent of ballots counted, Putin won another six-year term with a post-Soviet record of 87.29 percent of the vote, the Central Elections Committee (TsIK) said on March 18, adding that turnout was also at a “record” level, with 77.44 percent of eligible voters casting ballots.
The 71-year old Putin — who has ruled as either president or prime minister since 2000 — is now set to surpass Soviet dictator Josef Stalin’s nearly 30-year reign to become the longest-serving Russian leader in more than two centuries.
“This election has been based on repression and intimidation,” the European Union’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell told journalists in Brussels on March 18 as the bloc’s foreign ministers gathered to discuss the election, among other issues.
The March 15-17 vote is the first for Putin since he launched his invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 that has killed tens of thousands of Russians and led to a clear break in relations with the West. In holding what has widely been viewed as faux elections, Putin wants to show that he has the nation’s full support, experts said.
The vote was also held in Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine, where hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers are located. Moscow illegally annexed the regions since launching the invasion, though it remains unclear how much of the territory it controls.
The Kremlin’s goal “is to get as many people as possible to sign off on Russia’s war against Ukraine. The idea is to get millions of Russian citizens to retroactively approve the decision Putin single-handedly made two years ago,” Maksim Trudolyubov, a senior fellow at the Kennan Institute, wrote in a note ahead of the vote.
In remarks shortly after he was declared the winner, Putin said the election showed that the nation was “one team.”
But Western leaders condemned the vote, with the White House National Security Council spokesperson saying they “are obviously not free nor fair given how Mr. Putin has imprisoned political opponents and prevented others from running against him.”
British Foreign Secretary David Cameron said “this is not what free and fair elections look like,” adding in his message on X, formerly Twitter, that illegal elections have also been held on occupied Ukrainian territory.
The French Foreign Ministry said Putin’s reelection came amid a wave of repression against civil society. It also praised in a statement the courage of “the many Russian citizens who peacefully protested against this attack on their fundamental political rights.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Putin has become “sick with power” and he is just “simulating” elections.
“This imitation of ‘elections’ has no legitimacy and cannot have any. This person must end up in the dock in The Hague [at the International UN Tribunal for War Crimes],” Zelenskiy said on X.
Putin’s allies were quick to heap praise on the Russian leader for his election success.
China, one of Russia’s most importants allies, congratulated Putin, with Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian saying President Xi Jinping and the Russian leader “will continue to maintain close exchanges, lead the two countries to continue to uphold long-standing good-neighborly friendship, deepen comprehensive strategic coordination.”
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi called Putin’s victory “decisive,” the state news agency IRNA reported.
WATCH: Leading psychiatrists discuss how excessive power can impact brain functioning and what the impulse for total control reveals about the mind and personality traits of authority figures.
Putin was opposed by three relatively unknown, Kremlin-friendly politicians whose campaign was barely noticeable. The main intrigue was whether Russians would heed opposition calls to gather at polling stations at noon on March 17 to silently protest against Putin’s rule.
Russian media had reported in the months leading up to the election that the Kremlin was determined to engineer a victory for Putin that would surpass the 2018 results, when he won 77.5 percent of the vote with a turnout of 67.5 percent.
The Kremlin banned anti-war politician Boris Nadezhdin from the ballot after tens of thousands of voters lined up in the cold to support his candidacy. Nadezhdin threatened to undermine the narrative of overwhelming support for Putin and his war, experts said.
Independent election observers were barred from working at this year’s presidential election for the first time in post-Soviet history, experts said. Russian elections have been notorious for ballot stuffing and other irregularities.
The vote was also held in Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine, where hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers are located.
The United States called the elections neither fair nor free.
‘Noon Against Putin’
With options to express resistance severely limited by the lack of competition and repressive laws, opposition leaders called on voters opposed to Putin to gather near polls at noon to show the Kremlin and the country that they were still a force.
Russia’s opposition movement suffered a serious blow last month when Aleksei Navalny, Putin’s fiercest and most popular critic, died in unclear circumstances in a maximum-security prison in the Arctic where he was serving a 19-year sentence on charges of extremism widely seen as politically motivated.
Long lines formed at polling stations across Russia’s 11 time zones at the designated time for the “Noon Against Putin” protest, including in Novosibirsk, Chita, Yekaterinburg, Perm, and Moscow among other Russian cities.
“We’re not really expecting anything, but I’d somehow like to make a record of this election for myself, tick the box for myself, so, when talking about it later, I could say that I didn’t just sit at home, but came and tried to do something,” said one Russian who came to vote at noon.
“The action has achieved its goals,” Ivan Zhdanov, the head the Anti-Corruption Foundation formerly headed by Navalny, said in a YouTube video. “The action has shown that there is another Russia, there are people who stand against Putin.”
The Moscow prosecutor’s office had earlier warned of criminal prosecution against those who interfered with the vote, a step it said was necessary due to social-media posts “containing calls for an unlimited number of people to simultaneously arrive to participate in uncoordinated mass public events at polling stations in Moscow [at noon on March 17] in order to violate electoral legislation.”
Lawyer Valeria Vetoshkina, who has left the country, told Current Time that if people do not bring posters and do not announce why they came to the polling station at that hour, it would be hard for the authorities to legitimately declare it a “violation.”
But she warned that there were “some basic safety rules that you can follow if you’re worried. The first is not to discuss why you came, just to vote. And secondly, it is better to come without any visual means of agitation: without posters, flags, and so on.”
Ella Pamfilova, head of Russia’s Central Election Commission (TsIK), on March 16 said there had been 20 cases of people attempting to destroy voting sheets by pouring liquids into ballot boxes and eight incidents of people trying to destroy ballots by setting them on fire or by using smoke bombs.
Russians living abroad also took part in the “Noon Against Putin” campaign, with hundreds of people lining up at 12 p.m. outside the Russian embassies in Sidney, Tokyo, Phuket, Dubai, Istanbul, Berlin, Paris, and Yerevan among other capitals.
“It’s not an election. It’s just a fake. And so we’re here to show that not Russians elect the current leader of Russia, that we [are] against him very severely, and that lots of people had to flee their country to be free,” said Anna, a Russian citizen living in Berlin and who gathered outside the embassy in the German capital.
Putin was challenged by Liberal Democratic Party leader Leonid Slutsky, State Duma deputy speaker Vladislav Davankov of the New People party, and State Duma lawmaker Nikolai Kharitonov of the Communist Party, none of whom opposed the war.
The Russian leader had the full resources of the state behind him, including the media, police, state-owned companies, and election officials.
This content originally appeared on News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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This content originally appeared on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and was authored by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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This content originally appeared on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and was authored by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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This content originally appeared on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and was authored by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
-
Long lines formed at polling stations across Russia’s 11 time zones in time for the “Noon Against Putin” protest against a presidential election expected to virtually gift Vladimir Putin another six years of rule, making him the country’s longest-serving leader.
Voting on March 17, the last day of the election held over a span of three days, took place with virtually no opposition to the long-serving incumbent.
Russians not in favor of seeing Putin serve yet another term settled on showing up at polling places simultaneously at midday in large numbers, with some taking steps to spoil their ballots.
Dozens of detentions were reported around the country as the vote took place under tight security, with Russia claiming that Ukraine, which it accused of launching a wave of air attacks that reached as far as Moscow, was attempting to disrupt voting.
Putin’s greatest political rival, Aleksei Navalny, died a month before the polls in an Arctic prison amid suspicious circumstances while serving sentences widely seen as politically motivated.
Other serious opponents to Putin are either in jail or exile or were barred from running against him amid a heightened crackdown on dissent and the independent media.
The situation left only three token rivals from Kremlin-friendly parties on the ballot — Liberal Democratic Party leader Leonid Slutsky, State Duma deputy speaker Vladislav Davankov of the New People party, and State Duma lawmaker Nikolai Kharitonov of the Communist Party.
Despite Navalny’s death, his support for the idea of using the “Noon Against Putin” action to show the strength of the opposition lived on. The protest, a workaround of Russia’s restrictive laws on public assembly, called on people to assemble at polling stations precisely at noon.
While it was difficult to determine voters’ reasoning for showing up to vote, many appeared to be answering the call to protest across the country as the deadline moved from Russia’s Far East toward Moscow, and from then to the western area of the country and parts of Ukraine occupied by Russia.
Videos and images posted on social media showed long lines of voters formed at noon in Novosibirsk, Chita, Yekaterinburg, Perm, and Moscow among other Russian cities.
“The action has achieved its goals,” said Ivan Zhdanov, the head the Anti-Corruption Foundation formerly headed by Navalny, on YouTube. “The action has shown that there is another Russia, there are people who stand against Putin.”
The protests were accompanied by a heavy police presence and the threat of long prison terms for those seen as disrupting the voting process.
The OVD-Info group, which monitors political arrests in Russia, said that more than 65 people were arrested in 14 cities across the country on March 17.
Twenty people in Kazan, in the Tatarstan region, were detained and later released, according to Current Time. One Ufa resident was reportedly detained for trying to stuff a photograph of Navalny into a ballot box. And in Moscow, a voter was detained after he appeared at a polling station wearing a T-shirt bearing Navalny’s name.
In St. Petersburg, a woman was reportedly arrested after she threw a firebomb at a polling station entrance, others were detained elsewhere in the country for spoiling ballots with green antiseptic into ballot boxes.
Some activists were reportedly summoned to visit Federal Security Service branches precisely at 12 p.m., the same time the protest was expected.
Outside Russia, Russian citizens also reportedly took part in the “Noon Against Putin” campaign, including in Tokyo, Istanbul, and Phuket. In Moldova, voting at the Russian Consulate in Chisinau was reportedly delayed after an apparent fire-bombing.
The Moscow prosecutor’s office earlier warned of criminal prosecution of those who interfered with the vote, a step it said was necessary due to social-media posts “containing calls for an unlimited number of people to simultaneously arrive to participate in uncoordinated mass public events at polling stations in Moscow [at noon on March 17] in order to violate electoral legislation.”
Lawyer Valeria Vetoshkina, who has left the country, told Current Time that if people do not bring posters and do not announce why they came to the polling station at that hour, it would be hard for the authorities to legitimately declare it a “violation.”
But she warned that there are “some basic safety rules that you can follow if you’re worried. The first is not to discuss why you came, just to vote. And secondly, it is better to come without any visual means of agitation: without posters, flags, and so on.”
The OVD-Info human rights group issued a statement labeled “How to Protect Yourself” ahead of the planned protest, also saying not to bring posters or banners and “do not demonstrate symbols that can attract the attention of the police, do not shout slogans. If you are asked why you came at noon, do not give the real reason.”
Russian election officials, officially, said that as of late afternoon on March 17 more than 70 percent of the country’s 114 million eligible voters had cast ballots either in person or online.
Observers widely predict that there was virtually no chance that Putin would not gain another term in office. A victory would hand him his fifth presidential term over a span of 24 years, interrupted only by his time spent as prime minister from 2008-2012.
Over the first two days, some Russians expressed their anger over Putin’s authoritarian rule by vandalizing ballot boxes with a green antiseptic dye known as “zelyonka” and other liquids, with Russian officials and independent media reporting at least 28 cases.
Incidents were reported in at least nine cities, including Moscow, St. Petersburg, Sochi, and Volgograd.
Ella Pamfilova, head of Russia’s Central Election Commission (TsIK), on March 16 said there had been 20 cases of people attempting to destroy voting sheets by pouring liquids into ballot boxes and eight incidents of people trying to destroy ballots by setting them on fire or by using smoke bombs.
On March 16, independent media reported that Russian police had opened at least 28 criminal probes into incidents of vandalism in polling stations, a number expected to grow.
Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, now deputy head of the Security Council, on March 16 denounced election protesters as “villains” and “traitors” who are aiding the country’s enemies, particularly Ukraine.
“This is direct assistance to those degenerates who are shelling our cities today,” he said on Telegram. “Criminal activists at polling stations should be aware that they can rattle for 20 years in a special regime [prison],” he added.
Many observers say Putin warded off even the faintest of challengers to ensure a large margin of victory that he can point to as evidence that Russians back the full-scale war Moscow launched against Ukraine in February 2022.
Meanwhile, Ukraine stepped up attacks on Russia leading up to the election, including strikes deep inside the country.
On March 17, Russia’s Defense Ministry reported downing 35 Ukrainian drones overnight, including four in the Moscow region. Other drones were reportedly downed in the Kaluga and Yaroslavl regions neighboring the Moscow region, and in the Belgorod, Kursk, and Rostov regions along Russia’s southwestern border with Ukraine.
On March 16, Ukrainian forces shelled the border city of Belgorod and the village of Glotovo, killing at least three people and wounding eight others, Russian officials said.
The same day, a Ukrainian drone strike caused a fire at an oil refinery that belongs to Russian oil giant Rosneft in the Samara region, some 850 kilometers southeast of Moscow, regional Governor Dmitry Azarov said. An attack on another refinery was thwarted, he added.
Ukraine generally does not comment on attacks inside Russia, but Reuters quoted an unidentified Ukrainian source as saying that Kyiv’s SBU intelligence agency was behind strikes at three Samara region Rosneft refineries — Syzran, Novokuibyshevsky, and Kuibyshevsky, which is inside the Samara city limits.
“The SBU continues to implement its strategy to undermine the economic potential of the Russian Federation that allows it to wage war in Ukraine,” the news agency quoted the source as saying.
Russian authorities, who have accused Kyiv of launching assaults designed to disrupt voting, claimed that Ukraine on March 16 dropped a missile on a voting station in a Russian-occupied part of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhya region, although the report could not be verified.
With reporting by RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service, Reuters, and AP
This content originally appeared on News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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Long lines formed at polling stations across Russia’s 11 time zones in time for the “Noon Against Putin” protest against a presidential election expected to virtually gift Vladimir Putin another six years of rule, making him the country’s longest-serving leader.
Voting on March 17, the last day of the election held over a span of three days, took place with virtually no opposition to the long-serving incumbent.
Russians not in favor of seeing Putin serve yet another term settled on showing up at polling places simultaneously at midday in large numbers, with some taking steps to spoil their ballots.
Dozens of detentions were reported around the country as the vote took place under tight security, with Russia claiming that Ukraine, which it accused of launching a wave of air attacks that reached as far as Moscow, was attempting to disrupt voting.
Putin’s greatest political rival, Aleksei Navalny, died a month before the polls in an Arctic prison amid suspicious circumstances while serving sentences widely seen as politically motivated.
Other serious opponents to Putin are either in jail or exile or were barred from running against him amid a heightened crackdown on dissent and the independent media.
The situation left only three token rivals from Kremlin-friendly parties on the ballot — Liberal Democratic Party leader Leonid Slutsky, State Duma deputy speaker Vladislav Davankov of the New People party, and State Duma lawmaker Nikolai Kharitonov of the Communist Party.
Despite Navalny’s death, his support for the idea of using the “Noon Against Putin” action to show the strength of the opposition lived on. The protest, a workaround of Russia’s restrictive laws on public assembly, called on people to assemble at polling stations precisely at noon.
While it was difficult to determine voters’ reasoning for showing up to vote, many appeared to be answering the call to protest across the country as the deadline moved from Russia’s Far East toward Moscow, and from then to the western area of the country and parts of Ukraine occupied by Russia.
Videos and images posted on social media showed long lines of voters formed at noon in Novosibirsk, Chita, Yekaterinburg, Perm, and Moscow among other Russian cities.
“The action has achieved its goals,” said Ivan Zhdanov, the head the Anti-Corruption Foundation formerly headed by Navalny, on YouTube. “The action has shown that there is another Russia, there are people who stand against Putin.”
The protests were accompanied by a heavy police presence and the threat of long prison terms for those seen as disrupting the voting process.
The OVD-Info group, which monitors political arrests in Russia, said that more than 65 people were arrested in 14 cities across the country on March 17.
Twenty people in Kazan, in the Tatarstan region, were detained and later released, according to Current Time. One Ufa resident was reportedly detained for trying to stuff a photograph of Navalny into a ballot box. And in Moscow, a voter was detained after he appeared at a polling station wearing a T-shirt bearing Navalny’s name.
In St. Petersburg, a woman was reportedly arrested after she threw a firebomb at a polling station entrance, others were detained elsewhere in the country for spoiling ballots with green antiseptic into ballot boxes.
Some activists were reportedly summoned to visit Federal Security Service branches precisely at 12 p.m., the same time the protest was expected.
Outside Russia, Russian citizens also reportedly took part in the “Noon Against Putin” campaign, including in Tokyo, Istanbul, and Phuket. In Moldova, voting at the Russian Consulate in Chisinau was reportedly delayed after an apparent fire-bombing.
The Moscow prosecutor’s office earlier warned of criminal prosecution of those who interfered with the vote, a step it said was necessary due to social-media posts “containing calls for an unlimited number of people to simultaneously arrive to participate in uncoordinated mass public events at polling stations in Moscow [at noon on March 17] in order to violate electoral legislation.”
Lawyer Valeria Vetoshkina, who has left the country, told Current Time that if people do not bring posters and do not announce why they came to the polling station at that hour, it would be hard for the authorities to legitimately declare it a “violation.”
But she warned that there are “some basic safety rules that you can follow if you’re worried. The first is not to discuss why you came, just to vote. And secondly, it is better to come without any visual means of agitation: without posters, flags, and so on.”
The OVD-Info human rights group issued a statement labeled “How to Protect Yourself” ahead of the planned protest, also saying not to bring posters or banners and “do not demonstrate symbols that can attract the attention of the police, do not shout slogans. If you are asked why you came at noon, do not give the real reason.”
Russian election officials, officially, said that as of late afternoon on March 17 more than 70 percent of the country’s 114 million eligible voters had cast ballots either in person or online.
Observers widely predict that there was virtually no chance that Putin would not gain another term in office. A victory would hand him his fifth presidential term over a span of 24 years, interrupted only by his time spent as prime minister from 2008-2012.
Over the first two days, some Russians expressed their anger over Putin’s authoritarian rule by vandalizing ballot boxes with a green antiseptic dye known as “zelyonka” and other liquids, with Russian officials and independent media reporting at least 28 cases.
Incidents were reported in at least nine cities, including Moscow, St. Petersburg, Sochi, and Volgograd.
Ella Pamfilova, head of Russia’s Central Election Commission (TsIK), on March 16 said there had been 20 cases of people attempting to destroy voting sheets by pouring liquids into ballot boxes and eight incidents of people trying to destroy ballots by setting them on fire or by using smoke bombs.
On March 16, independent media reported that Russian police had opened at least 28 criminal probes into incidents of vandalism in polling stations, a number expected to grow.
Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, now deputy head of the Security Council, on March 16 denounced election protesters as “villains” and “traitors” who are aiding the country’s enemies, particularly Ukraine.
“This is direct assistance to those degenerates who are shelling our cities today,” he said on Telegram. “Criminal activists at polling stations should be aware that they can rattle for 20 years in a special regime [prison],” he added.
Many observers say Putin warded off even the faintest of challengers to ensure a large margin of victory that he can point to as evidence that Russians back the full-scale war Moscow launched against Ukraine in February 2022.
Meanwhile, Ukraine stepped up attacks on Russia leading up to the election, including strikes deep inside the country.
On March 17, Russia’s Defense Ministry reported downing 35 Ukrainian drones overnight, including four in the Moscow region. Other drones were reportedly downed in the Kaluga and Yaroslavl regions neighboring the Moscow region, and in the Belgorod, Kursk, and Rostov regions along Russia’s southwestern border with Ukraine.
On March 16, Ukrainian forces shelled the border city of Belgorod and the village of Glotovo, killing at least three people and wounding eight others, Russian officials said.
The same day, a Ukrainian drone strike caused a fire at an oil refinery that belongs to Russian oil giant Rosneft in the Samara region, some 850 kilometers southeast of Moscow, regional Governor Dmitry Azarov said. An attack on another refinery was thwarted, he added.
Ukraine generally does not comment on attacks inside Russia, but Reuters quoted an unidentified Ukrainian source as saying that Kyiv’s SBU intelligence agency was behind strikes at three Samara region Rosneft refineries — Syzran, Novokuibyshevsky, and Kuibyshevsky, which is inside the Samara city limits.
“The SBU continues to implement its strategy to undermine the economic potential of the Russian Federation that allows it to wage war in Ukraine,” the news agency quoted the source as saying.
Russian authorities, who have accused Kyiv of launching assaults designed to disrupt voting, claimed that Ukraine on March 16 dropped a missile on a voting station in a Russian-occupied part of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhya region, although the report could not be verified.
With reporting by RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service, Reuters, and AP
This content originally appeared on News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
-
Long lines formed at polling stations across Russia’s 11 time zones in time for the “Noon Against Putin” protest against a presidential election expected to virtually gift Vladimir Putin another six years of rule, making him the country’s longest-serving leader.
Voting on March 17, the last day of the election held over a span of three days, took place with virtually no opposition to the long-serving incumbent.
Russians not in favor of seeing Putin serve yet another term settled on showing up at polling places simultaneously at midday in large numbers, with some taking steps to spoil their ballots.
Dozens of detentions were reported around the country as the vote took place under tight security, with Russia claiming that Ukraine, which it accused of launching a wave of air attacks that reached as far as Moscow, was attempting to disrupt voting.
Putin’s greatest political rival, Aleksei Navalny, died a month before the polls in an Arctic prison amid suspicious circumstances while serving sentences widely seen as politically motivated.
Other serious opponents to Putin are either in jail or exile or were barred from running against him amid a heightened crackdown on dissent and the independent media.
The situation left only three token rivals from Kremlin-friendly parties on the ballot — Liberal Democratic Party leader Leonid Slutsky, State Duma deputy speaker Vladislav Davankov of the New People party, and State Duma lawmaker Nikolai Kharitonov of the Communist Party.
Despite Navalny’s death, his support for the idea of using the “Noon Against Putin” action to show the strength of the opposition lived on. The protest, a workaround of Russia’s restrictive laws on public assembly, called on people to assemble at polling stations precisely at noon.
While it was difficult to determine voters’ reasoning for showing up to vote, many appeared to be answering the call to protest across the country as the deadline moved from Russia’s Far East toward Moscow, and from then to the western area of the country and parts of Ukraine occupied by Russia.
Videos and images posted on social media showed long lines of voters formed at noon in Novosibirsk, Chita, Yekaterinburg, Perm, and Moscow among other Russian cities.
“The action has achieved its goals,” said Ivan Zhdanov, the head the Anti-Corruption Foundation formerly headed by Navalny, on YouTube. “The action has shown that there is another Russia, there are people who stand against Putin.”
The protests were accompanied by a heavy police presence and the threat of long prison terms for those seen as disrupting the voting process.
The OVD-Info group, which monitors political arrests in Russia, said that more than 65 people were arrested in 14 cities across the country on March 17.
Twenty people in Kazan, in the Tatarstan region, were detained and later released, according to Current Time. One Ufa resident was reportedly detained for trying to stuff a photograph of Navalny into a ballot box. And in Moscow, a voter was detained after he appeared at a polling station wearing a T-shirt bearing Navalny’s name.
In St. Petersburg, a woman was reportedly arrested after she threw a firebomb at a polling station entrance, others were detained elsewhere in the country for spoiling ballots with green antiseptic into ballot boxes.
Some activists were reportedly summoned to visit Federal Security Service branches precisely at 12 p.m., the same time the protest was expected.
Outside Russia, Russian citizens also reportedly took part in the “Noon Against Putin” campaign, including in Tokyo, Istanbul, and Phuket. In Moldova, voting at the Russian Consulate in Chisinau was reportedly delayed after an apparent fire-bombing.
The Moscow prosecutor’s office earlier warned of criminal prosecution of those who interfered with the vote, a step it said was necessary due to social-media posts “containing calls for an unlimited number of people to simultaneously arrive to participate in uncoordinated mass public events at polling stations in Moscow [at noon on March 17] in order to violate electoral legislation.”
Lawyer Valeria Vetoshkina, who has left the country, told Current Time that if people do not bring posters and do not announce why they came to the polling station at that hour, it would be hard for the authorities to legitimately declare it a “violation.”
But she warned that there are “some basic safety rules that you can follow if you’re worried. The first is not to discuss why you came, just to vote. And secondly, it is better to come without any visual means of agitation: without posters, flags, and so on.”
The OVD-Info human rights group issued a statement labeled “How to Protect Yourself” ahead of the planned protest, also saying not to bring posters or banners and “do not demonstrate symbols that can attract the attention of the police, do not shout slogans. If you are asked why you came at noon, do not give the real reason.”
Russian election officials, officially, said that as of late afternoon on March 17 more than 70 percent of the country’s 114 million eligible voters had cast ballots either in person or online.
Observers widely predict that there was virtually no chance that Putin would not gain another term in office. A victory would hand him his fifth presidential term over a span of 24 years, interrupted only by his time spent as prime minister from 2008-2012.
Over the first two days, some Russians expressed their anger over Putin’s authoritarian rule by vandalizing ballot boxes with a green antiseptic dye known as “zelyonka” and other liquids, with Russian officials and independent media reporting at least 28 cases.
Incidents were reported in at least nine cities, including Moscow, St. Petersburg, Sochi, and Volgograd.
Ella Pamfilova, head of Russia’s Central Election Commission (TsIK), on March 16 said there had been 20 cases of people attempting to destroy voting sheets by pouring liquids into ballot boxes and eight incidents of people trying to destroy ballots by setting them on fire or by using smoke bombs.
On March 16, independent media reported that Russian police had opened at least 28 criminal probes into incidents of vandalism in polling stations, a number expected to grow.
Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, now deputy head of the Security Council, on March 16 denounced election protesters as “villains” and “traitors” who are aiding the country’s enemies, particularly Ukraine.
“This is direct assistance to those degenerates who are shelling our cities today,” he said on Telegram. “Criminal activists at polling stations should be aware that they can rattle for 20 years in a special regime [prison],” he added.
Many observers say Putin warded off even the faintest of challengers to ensure a large margin of victory that he can point to as evidence that Russians back the full-scale war Moscow launched against Ukraine in February 2022.
Meanwhile, Ukraine stepped up attacks on Russia leading up to the election, including strikes deep inside the country.
On March 17, Russia’s Defense Ministry reported downing 35 Ukrainian drones overnight, including four in the Moscow region. Other drones were reportedly downed in the Kaluga and Yaroslavl regions neighboring the Moscow region, and in the Belgorod, Kursk, and Rostov regions along Russia’s southwestern border with Ukraine.
On March 16, Ukrainian forces shelled the border city of Belgorod and the village of Glotovo, killing at least three people and wounding eight others, Russian officials said.
The same day, a Ukrainian drone strike caused a fire at an oil refinery that belongs to Russian oil giant Rosneft in the Samara region, some 850 kilometers southeast of Moscow, regional Governor Dmitry Azarov said. An attack on another refinery was thwarted, he added.
Ukraine generally does not comment on attacks inside Russia, but Reuters quoted an unidentified Ukrainian source as saying that Kyiv’s SBU intelligence agency was behind strikes at three Samara region Rosneft refineries — Syzran, Novokuibyshevsky, and Kuibyshevsky, which is inside the Samara city limits.
“The SBU continues to implement its strategy to undermine the economic potential of the Russian Federation that allows it to wage war in Ukraine,” the news agency quoted the source as saying.
Russian authorities, who have accused Kyiv of launching assaults designed to disrupt voting, claimed that Ukraine on March 16 dropped a missile on a voting station in a Russian-occupied part of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhya region, although the report could not be verified.
With reporting by RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service, Reuters, and AP
This content originally appeared on News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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Male students who enrolled in Taliban-run religious schools say that sexual and physical abuse has led some to end their pursuit of an education in Afghanistan.
The students, all of whom were aged 10 to 17 and spoke to RFE/RL’s Radio Azadi on condition of anonymity out of fears of repercussion, described numerous instances in which they and fellow classmates were pressured to engage in sexual acts with teachers and subjected to corporal punishments.
The reported cases took place in western and southwestern Afghanistan at Taliban-run madrasahs, part of the network of religious schools that the extremist group has expanded significantly as part of its drive to foster religious education more in keeping with its hard-line Islamist views.
One 16-year-old student, a resident of Farah Province, described being propositioned by a teacher at the madrasah he attends.
“One day at school a Taliban member who teaches there made an inappropriate offer, but I did not accept it,” the boy told Radio Azadi, using inexplicit language to describe sexual abuse, a culturally taboo topic in Afghanistan. “When the lessons were over, he bothered me again.”
The boy said he reported the incidents to a “qari,” a person who has memorized the Koran and serves as a religious authority at the school, to no avail.
“I told the qari that the teacher was doing bad things to me, and the qari told him not to do these things, that he was a teacher,” the boy said. “The teacher admitted doing it, but it had no effect. He has continued to do bad things and made sexual requests to numerous students at the school.”
A Taliban-controlled madrasah in Afghanistan Another student in southwestern Afghanistan, a 17-year-old in the 10th grade, gave a similar account of his experience during his six months studying at a Taliban-run madrasah.
“A Taliban member who teaches at the school proposed having a relationship with me and said some other things that I did not accept,” the boy said.
After being refused, the teacher swore and issued threats, the boy said, adding that his fellow students have faced similar treatment.
“He also harassed several of my classmates, and one of them left the school,” the boy said. “He told me I should not go to school anymore because the same teacher is harassing me.”
The boy said the experience has left him “damaged” and unsure of whom he can confide in. “I can’t tell my family,” he said.
The Taliban has come under widespread criticism for the severe restrictions it has placed on the daily lives of the Afghans since seizing power in August 2021. In its pursuit to impose its extreme interpretation of Islam, the Taliban has restored many of the draconian rules it was infamous for during its first stint in power from 1996 to 2001.
The ban on the education of girls past the sixth grade, and the erasure of women’s role in society stand out among the measures the Taliban has taken. But other steps — including prohibitions on music and idolatry through art, and pressure against students and teachers — have affected all walks of life regardless of sex.
Since the Taliban returned to power, many educators have left the country, while female teachers have been left at home without work due to restrictions on women’s freedom of movement and their ability to teach males.
Meanwhile, the Taliban has steadily worked to replace secular state schools and informal madrasahs with a system of religious schooling. The system does allow for girl students, including those of university age, but critics say it falls far short of the standards of modern education for girls and boys alike and often promotes extremism.
According to a report on Afghanistan issued by the United Nations in February, the Taliban has established 6,836 madrasahs for males and 380 for females and was expected to finalize a standardized religious curriculum in time for the new school year beginning this month.
Afghan boys read the Koran at a madrasah in Kabul. The recruitment of madrasah teachers is also in full swing, according to the report, following a decree by the Taliban’s spiritual leader Mullah Haibatullah Akhundzada to have 100,000 new madrasah teachers in place.
In December, Human Rights Watch gave a stinging assessment of the state of education in general, saying that in addition to the obstacles to the education of girls and women, the Taliban had “also inflicted deep harm on boys’ education” in Afghanistan.
“Many boys were previously taught by women teachers; the Taliban has prohibited women from teaching boys, depriving women teachers of their jobs and often leaving boys with unqualified replacement male teachers or sometimes no teachers at all,” HRW said. “Parents and students said that corporal punishment, which has long been a problem at Afghan schools, has become increasingly common. The curriculum in many schools appears to be under revision to remove important school subjects and promote discrimination.”
The rights watchdog said the circumstances had “led many boys to leave school altogether” and “left boys struggling with mental health problems such as anxiety and depression.”
Shortly after the Taliban regained power, the United Nations highlighted the dire situation for children in Afghanistan, including exposure to sexual violence and increased risk of students dropping out of school.
A madrasah in Kandahar Difficulties in ensuring the protection of children are exacerbated, according to the UN, by the Taliban’s refusal to consider people below the age of 18 to be children, as is the international standard, instead using the onset of puberty as the basis for adulthood.
Younger madrasah students in western and southwestern Afghanistan below or at the age of puberty said they were not spared physical abuse and sexual harassment from teachers.
One young man who spoke to Radio Azadi said he recently learned that his young brother was being subjected to sexual abuse at a madrasah in western Afghanistan.
The young man said his brother was being assigned extracurricular “homework by a teacher, or to put it bluntly, he was being asked for sex, [the teacher] fondled his hands and feet and kissed him.”
As a result, the young man said he told his brother not to go to school anymore.
Fear of sexual harassment and sexual and physical abuse were cited as a common factor leading boys in western and southwestern Afghanistan to give up their studies.
“Some teachers harass our students and make immoral requests,” said one 14-year-old boy who also described common methods of corporal punishment at his madrasah. “They strike our faces or beat our hands and feet under the pretext of disciplining us for not learning our lessons properly.”
Afghan boys peek out from inside a madrasah in Kandahar. The boy said many students were studying hard in fear of being taken to a special room for punishment, and that “some even drop out of school.”
Another student, aged 10, said his teacher separated him and other students from their class to beat the soles of their feet.
Afterward, he told Radio Azadi, he stopped going to class because he was afraid. And upon hearing about the incidents, his and his classmates’ parents “did not allow us to go to school.”
The Taliban authorities did not respond to requests for comment on the allegations of abuse at madrasahs it has established. And efforts to speak to individuals aware of the situations at madrasahs in other areas of Afghanistan were met by refusals to comment due to fear of reprisals.
A women’s rights activist who asked that her name not be published told Radio Azadi that families have no avenue to lodge complaints about the abuse their children encounter at Taliban-run madrasahs because they, too, would face threats.
The activist said that not only had she been made aware of sexual harassment against both girls and boys at Taliban-run madrasahs, but the curriculum also serves to “increase the level of extremism in the country.”
Reducing the risks of both threats, she said, would require greater oversight by the Taliban authorities and ideally, she said, a reduction in the number of madrasahs.
Najib Amini, a civil society activist in western Afghanistan, said that for now, the onus falls on families to be aware.
“Children are subjected to sexual abuse in madrasahs established under the Taliban regime,” Amini said. “Families have an important and essential role in this regard. If they do not want their children to be abused in schools, if they want their children to get a basic education…then they should not send their children to madrasahs under the control of the Taliban.”
Written by Michael Scollon based on reporting by RFE/RL’s Radio Azadi
This content originally appeared on News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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Long lines formed at polling stations across Russia’s 11 time zones in time for the “Noon Against Putin” protest against a presidential election expected to virtually gift Vladimir Putin another six years of rule, making him the country’s longest-serving leader.
Voting on March 17, the last day of the election held over a span of three days, took place with virtually no opposition to the long-serving incumbent.
Russians not in favor of seeing Putin serve yet another term settled on showing up at polling places simultaneously at midday in large numbers, with some taking steps to spoil their ballots.
Dozens of detentions were reported around the country as the vote took place under tight security, with Russia claiming that Ukraine, which it accused of launching a wave of air attacks that reached as far as Moscow, was attempting to disrupt voting.
Putin’s greatest political rival, Aleksei Navalny, died a month before the polls in an Arctic prison amid suspicious circumstances while serving sentences widely seen as politically motivated.
Other serious opponents to Putin are either in jail or exile or were barred from running against him amid a heightened crackdown on dissent and the independent media.
The situation left only three token rivals from Kremlin-friendly parties on the ballot — Liberal Democratic Party leader Leonid Slutsky, State Duma deputy speaker Vladislav Davankov of the New People party, and State Duma lawmaker Nikolai Kharitonov of the Communist Party.
Despite Navalny’s death, his support for the idea of using the “Noon Against Putin” action to show the strength of the opposition lived on. The protest, a workaround of Russia’s restrictive laws on public assembly, called on people to assemble at polling stations precisely at noon.
While it was difficult to determine voters’ reasoning for showing up to vote, many appeared to be answering the call to protest across the country as the deadline moved from Russia’s Far East toward Moscow, and from then to the western area of the country and parts of Ukraine occupied by Russia.
Videos and images posted on social media showed long lines of voters formed at noon in Novosibirsk, Chita, Yekaterinburg, Perm, and Moscow among other Russian cities.
“The action has achieved its goals,” said Ivan Zhdanov, the head the Anti-Corruption Foundation formerly headed by Navalny, on YouTube. “The action has shown that there is another Russia, there are people who stand against Putin.”
The protests were accompanied by a heavy police presence and the threat of long prison terms for those seen as disrupting the voting process.
The OVD-Info group, which monitors political arrests in Russia, said that more than 65 people were arrested in 14 cities across the country on March 17.
Twenty people in Kazan, in the Tatarstan region, were detained and later released, according to Current Time. One Ufa resident was reportedly detained for trying to stuff a photograph of Navalny into a ballot box. And in Moscow, a voter was detained after he appeared at a polling station wearing a T-shirt bearing Navalny’s name.
In St. Petersburg, a woman was reportedly arrested after she threw a firebomb at a polling station entrance, others were detained elsewhere in the country for spoiling ballots with green antiseptic into ballot boxes.
Some activists were reportedly summoned to visit Federal Security Service branches precisely at 12 p.m., the same time the protest was expected.
Outside Russia, Russian citizens also reportedly took part in the “Noon Against Putin” campaign, including in Tokyo, Istanbul, and Phuket. In Moldova, voting at the Russian Consulate in Chisinau was reportedly delayed after an apparent fire-bombing.
The Moscow prosecutor’s office earlier warned of criminal prosecution of those who interfered with the vote, a step it said was necessary due to social-media posts “containing calls for an unlimited number of people to simultaneously arrive to participate in uncoordinated mass public events at polling stations in Moscow [at noon on March 17] in order to violate electoral legislation.”
Lawyer Valeria Vetoshkina, who has left the country, told Current Time that if people do not bring posters and do not announce why they came to the polling station at that hour, it would be hard for the authorities to legitimately declare it a “violation.”
But she warned that there are “some basic safety rules that you can follow if you’re worried. The first is not to discuss why you came, just to vote. And secondly, it is better to come without any visual means of agitation: without posters, flags, and so on.”
The OVD-Info human rights group issued a statement labeled “How to Protect Yourself” ahead of the planned protest, also saying not to bring posters or banners and “do not demonstrate symbols that can attract the attention of the police, do not shout slogans. If you are asked why you came at noon, do not give the real reason.”
Russian election officials, officially, said that as of late afternoon on March 17 more than 70 percent of the country’s 114 million eligible voters had cast ballots either in person or online.
Observers widely predict that there was virtually no chance that Putin would not gain another term in office. A victory would hand him his fifth presidential term over a span of 24 years, interrupted only by his time spent as prime minister from 2008-2012.
Over the first two days, some Russians expressed their anger over Putin’s authoritarian rule by vandalizing ballot boxes with a green antiseptic dye known as “zelyonka” and other liquids, with Russian officials and independent media reporting at least 28 cases.
Incidents were reported in at least nine cities, including Moscow, St. Petersburg, Sochi, and Volgograd.
Ella Pamfilova, head of Russia’s Central Election Commission (TsIK), on March 16 said there had been 20 cases of people attempting to destroy voting sheets by pouring liquids into ballot boxes and eight incidents of people trying to destroy ballots by setting them on fire or by using smoke bombs.
On March 16, independent media reported that Russian police had opened at least 28 criminal probes into incidents of vandalism in polling stations, a number expected to grow.
Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, now deputy head of the Security Council, on March 16 denounced election protesters as “villains” and “traitors” who are aiding the country’s enemies, particularly Ukraine.
“This is direct assistance to those degenerates who are shelling our cities today,” he said on Telegram. “Criminal activists at polling stations should be aware that they can rattle for 20 years in a special regime [prison],” he added.
Many observers say Putin warded off even the faintest of challengers to ensure a large margin of victory that he can point to as evidence that Russians back the full-scale war Moscow launched against Ukraine in February 2022.
Meanwhile, Ukraine stepped up attacks on Russia leading up to the election, including strikes deep inside the country.
On March 17, Russia’s Defense Ministry reported downing 35 Ukrainian drones overnight, including four in the Moscow region. Other drones were reportedly downed in the Kaluga and Yaroslavl regions neighboring the Moscow region, and in the Belgorod, Kursk, and Rostov regions along Russia’s southwestern border with Ukraine.
On March 16, Ukrainian forces shelled the border city of Belgorod and the village of Glotovo, killing at least three people and wounding eight others, Russian officials said.
The same day, a Ukrainian drone strike caused a fire at an oil refinery that belongs to Russian oil giant Rosneft in the Samara region, some 850 kilometers southeast of Moscow, regional Governor Dmitry Azarov said. An attack on another refinery was thwarted, he added.
Ukraine generally does not comment on attacks inside Russia, but Reuters quoted an unidentified Ukrainian source as saying that Kyiv’s SBU intelligence agency was behind strikes at three Samara region Rosneft refineries — Syzran, Novokuibyshevsky, and Kuibyshevsky, which is inside the Samara city limits.
“The SBU continues to implement its strategy to undermine the economic potential of the Russian Federation that allows it to wage war in Ukraine,” the news agency quoted the source as saying.
Russian authorities, who have accused Kyiv of launching assaults designed to disrupt voting, claimed that Ukraine on March 16 dropped a missile on a voting station in a Russian-occupied part of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhya region, although the report could not be verified.
With reporting by RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service, Reuters, and AP
This content originally appeared on News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News – Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.This post was originally published on Radio Free.