‘History will judge Putin poorly’: Joly slams Russian election
Global News
'History will judge Putin poorly,' Canada's Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly said after Russia's president secured his fifth term in an election many view as a sham.
Canada’s foreign minister has slammed Vladimir Putin’s re-election in Russia as a “flawed electoral process.”
“While he may celebrate today,” Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly said in a statement Monday, “history will judge Putin poorly for his authoritarianism, war and the illegal attempted annexation of the territory of a neighbouring country.”
After years of eroding and sidestepping Russia’s constitution, Putin secured his fifth term as president in a contest experts say was fixed months in advance.
Putin has led Russia as president or, briefly, as prime minister since 1999. By the time his latest term expires in 2030 (at which point he is expected to illegitimately secure another six years in the Kremlin), he will have ruled longer that Soviet dictator Josef Stalin and will be the longest-serving Russian leader since the 18th-century Tsarina Catherine the Great.
“Sadly for the Russian people, Putin has constructed a political system in which human rights are denied. His opponents are arrested and silenced, a free media does not operate and citizens are denied genuine political options,” Joly said.
She also condemned reports of Russian soldiers forcing people in occupied Ukraine to vote, calling it a “blatant breach of international law.”
She joined a chorus of democratic world leaders also denouncing the election results.
“Putin removes his political opponents, controls the media, and then crowns himself the winner. This is not democracy,” British foreign affairs minister and former prime minister David Cameron said.
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