Chinese President Xi Jinping sent a congratulatory note to Putin, according to China’s state outlet Xinhua News, in which he noted that there are great things ahead for Russia under Putin’s leadership.
Beijing’s hearty congratulations — echoed by Kremlin buddies in North Korea, Belarus, Venezuela, Nicaragua and Azerbaijan — arrived after Putin triumphed in the rigged election, landing 87 percent of the vote as he tightens his grip on Russian society.
The election campaign, in which Putin faced no genuine opposition, was marked by the death of Russian dissident leader Alexei Navalny in an Arctic penal colony and the Kremlin’s forces making slow but steady progress on the battlefield in eastern Ukraine.
While Putin’s friends and allies were quick to congratulate him, top Western officials were less than impressed at his trampling on the last vestiges of Russian democracy.
In a video on X, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that the “Russian dictator” is “simply sick for power and is doing everything to rule forever.”
The EU’s top diplomat Josep Borrell condemned the “illegal holding of so-called ‘elections’ in the territories of Ukraine that Russia has temporarily occupied,” and stressing that the EU will never recognize those votes.