Moscow, Russia
Reuters
President Vladimir Putin appealed on Thursday to voters, including in annexed parts of Ukraine, to be united in determining Russia’s future by casting ballots in this week’s presidential election which he is all but certain to win.
“It is vital to underscore our cohesion and resolve and move forward together. Every vote you cast is valued and meaningful,” Putin said in a video address first shown in the Russian far east and reported by national news agencies.
“I therefore ask you in the coming three days to exercise your right to vote.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks with Director General of Rossiya Segodnya media group Dmitry Kiselyov during an interview in Moscow, Russia, on 12th March, 2024. PICTURE: Sputnik/Gavriil Grigorov/Pool via Reuters/File photo
Putin, 71 and in power as president or prime minister since 2000, faces three challengers in three days of voting beginning on Friday. None of the challengers has criticised him.
Opinion polls show he is supported by a majority of Russians, with one survey last month giving him 75% support.
Two candidates who had hoped to run on a platform of calling for an end to the war in Ukraine, officially described by Russia as a “special military operation,” were ruled ineligible.
In his video remarks, Putin said all voters wanted to see a strong, prosperous and free Russia “in order to raise living standards and the quality of life. And that is how it will be.”
The very act of voting, Putin said, was a “demonstration of patriotic feeling”. And this, he said, was particularly felt in areas of eastern and southern Ukraine now held by Russian forces – some since the launch of the February, 2022, invasion, others taken over by Russian-backed separatists in 2014.
Putin sent tens of thousands of troops over the border into Ukraine in February, 2022, and, after an unsuccessful initial attempt to move on the capital Kyiv, Moscow’s forces have concentrated their efforts on eastern and southern Ukraine.
Ukraine recaptured large chunks of territory in late 2022, but well dug-in Russian troops have been holding their own and last month seized the eastern town of Avdiivka.
Putin said the patriotic choices were clear to residents of areas in Donbas in eastern Ukraine and Novorossiya – a tsarist term for parts of southern Ukraine – who had voted for annexation by Russia in 2022 referendums denounced by Western countries as illegal.
“[They] voted in a referendum in the most difficult of conditions for unification with Russia and will again in the coming days make their choice,” Putin said.
“Those participating in the special operation will also vote. They are an examples to all Russians.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks with Director General of Rossiya Segodnya media group Dmitry Kiselyov during an interview in Moscow, Russia, on 12th March, 2024. PICTURE: Sputnik/Gavriil Grigorov/Pool via Reuters/File photo
Meanwhile, the Kremlin said on Thursday that comments on nuclear weapons that Putin made in an interview with state media did not constitute a threat to use them, and accused the US of deliberately taking the remarks out of context.
Putin said in the interview published on Wednesday that Russia was technically ready for nuclear war and that if the US sent troops to Ukraine, it would be considered a significant escalation of the conflict.
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Commenting on Putin’s words, White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters that Washington understood that the Russian leader was restating Moscow’s nuclear doctrine, but accused Russia of deploying “reckless and irresponsible” nuclear rhetoric throughout the Ukraine conflict.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Thursday that Putin had merely been answering a journalist’s questions on the subject and restating the already well known circumstances in which Russia would theoretically be forced to use nuclear weapons.
Peskov also drew attention to the fact that Putin had said in the same interview that the idea of using tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine had never crossed his mind.
Asked about the White House comments, Peskov said:
“This was deliberately taking something out of context. Putin made no threats about the use of nuclear weapons in this interview. The president was just talking about the reasons that could make the use of nuclear weapons inevitable.
“These are the reasons that are stated in our relevant documents, which are well known throughout the world. Moreover, everyone in the West deliberately failed to notice his words that it had never occurred to him to use tactical nuclear weapons [in Ukraine], despite the various situations that have developed in the course of the fighting.
“This is a deliberate distortion of the context and an unwillingness to hear President Putin.”
