Yulia navalnaya Vladimir Putin has been branded a “liar, thief and murderer” just hours before the Russian president is sworn in for a fifth term following sham elections.
Ms NavalnayaThe wife of late opposition leader Alexei Navalny urged his supporters to continue the “fight” against Putin’s “corrupt” regime.
The Russian president was appointed to a new six-year term in a Kremlin ceremony on Tuesday morning that was boycotted by many Western states, including Britain.
“With each of his terms, everything gets worse, and it is scary to imagine what else will happen while Putin remains in power,” said Ms. Navalnaya, now an opposition leader who is in exile in Russia to an undisclosed location. Hain told his supporters in a video message before the ceremony.
“The foundation of the Putin regime is lies and corruption”.
Ms Navalnaya’s husband Alexey, who was poisoned by Russia with Novichok in a suspected assassination attempt, died in an Arctic prison in February after he was jailed for crimes including terrorism, which his supporters have denounced. Was said to be politically motivated.
Her widower said, “Huge sums of money are stolen from us every day for the bombing of peaceful cities, for riot police to beat people with batons, for propagandists to spread lies.”
“And also for their own palaces, yachts and private jets. And as long as this continues, we cannot stop the fight.”
Putin, in power as president or prime minister since 1999, is starting his new mandate more than two years after sending thousands of troops into Ukraine, where Russian forces have regained the initiative after several reversals and are moving forward. Trying to. East.
At 71, Putin dominates the domestic political scene. On the international stage, he has been at loggerheads with the West, accusing him of using Ukraine as a medium to try to defeat and disintegrate Russia.
He won a landslide victory in a tightly controlled election in which two anti-war candidates were banned on technical grounds.
Britain, Canada and most EU countries also decided to boycott the swearing-in, but France said it would send its ambassador.
Ukraine said the incident “tried to create an illusion of legitimacy for the almost lifelong stay in power of a man who has transformed the Russian Federation into an aggressor state and the ruling regime into a dictatorship.”
A UK Foreign Office spokesman said, “Russia’s attack on Ukraine is an unprovoked, premeditated and barbaric attack against a sovereign democratic state.”
“The UK condemns the Russian government’s reprehensible actions which are a blatant violation of international law and the UN Charter.”