West divided as Ukraine urges allies to boycott Putin’s inauguration

Germany and most European Union countries appear ready to boycott Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin inauguration ceremony for a new six-year term on Tuesday, but France and several others are expected to send representatives despite the appeal from Kiev.

The diversity of diplomatic responses from European powers highlights a difference of opinion over how to deal with the Russian leader more than two years after he launched an invasion of Ukraine.

It was not clear whether the United States or the United Kingdom would be at the ceremony, to be held after Russia announced this Monday (6) that it would carry out tactical exercises with nuclear weapons, saying it hoped they would cool “hot heads” in the West.

Putin won a landslide victory in the presidential election in March, just weeks after his most prominent opponent, Alexei Navalny, died in prison. Western governments condemned the re-election, considering it unfair and undemocratic.

“Ukraine sees no legal basis for recognizing him as the democratically elected and legitimate president of the Russian Federation,” the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

Tuesday’s inauguration ceremony, says the ministry, seeks to create “the illusion of legality for the almost lifelong longevity in power of a person who transformed the Russian Federation into an aggressor state and the ruling regime into a dictatorship.”

A senior Kremlin source told the Interfax news agency that the heads of all foreign diplomatic missions in Moscow were invited to Putin’s inauguration.

A European diplomat told Reuters that 20 EU members will boycott the event, but another seven are expected to send representatives.