President Vladimir Putin was sworn in to a new six-year term in a ceremony boycotted by the United States and many other Western countries because of Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Putin, who has held power as president or prime minister since 1999, begins his new mission more than two years after sending tens of thousands of troops to Ukraine. There, Russian forces have regained the initiative through a series of reversals and are aiming for further advances. east.
At his inauguration ceremony for a record fifth term at the Grand Kremlin Palace on Tuesday, President Putin said Russia would come out of the current “difficult” period stronger and emerge victorious.
“We are a great nation united and together we will overcome all obstacles, realize everything we have planned and together we will win.”
President Putin is 71 years old and dominates domestic politics. On the international stage, he is at odds with Western countries, which he accuses of using Ukraine as a means to try to topple and dismantle Russia.
In March, President Putin won a landslide victory in a tightly controlled election in which two anti-war candidates were barred on technical grounds.
His most famous opponent, Alexei Navalny, died suddenly in an Arctic penal colony, and other leading critics were jailed or forced to flee the country.
Navalny’s widow, Yulia Navalnaya, appealed to supporters on Tuesday to continue the fight, describing Putin as a “liar, thief and murderer.”
Ukraine said the inauguration was aimed at creating “the illusion of legitimacy in the almost lifelong position of power of the person who turned the Russian Federation into an aggressor state and the ruling regime into a dictatorship.” Ta.
