President Vladimir Putin has been sworn in for a brand new six-year time period at a ceremony that was boycotted by the US and a lot of different Western nations due to Russia’s battle in Ukraine.
Putin, in energy as president or prime minister since 1999, begins his new mandate greater than two years after he despatched tens of 1000’s of troops into Ukraine, the place Russian forces have regained the initiative after a collection of reversals and are in search of to advance additional within the east.
Throughout Tuesday’s inauguration within the Grand Kremlin Palace for a report fifth presidential time period, Putin stated Russia would go by the present “tough” interval stronger and emerge victorious.
“We’re a united and nice nation, and collectively we’ll overcome all obstacles, realise the whole lot we now have deliberate, and collectively, we’ll win,” he stated.
At 71, Putin dominates the home political panorama. On the worldwide stage, he’s locked in a confrontation with Western nations he accuses of utilizing Ukraine as a car to attempt to defeat and dismember Russia.
In March, Putin received a landslide victory in a tightly managed election from which two antiwar candidates have been barred on technical grounds.
His best-known opponent, Alexey Navalny, died instantly in an Arctic penal colony, and different main critics have been both jailed or pressured to flee overseas.
Navalny’s widow, Yulia Navalnaya, on Tuesday urged supporters to maintain up the combat in opposition to Putin, who she described as “a liar, a thief and a assassin”.
Ukraine stated the inauguration sought to create “the phantasm of legality for the practically lifelong keep in energy of an individual who has turned the Russian Federation into an aggressor state and the ruling regime right into a dictatorship”.