By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
President Cyril Ramaphosa congratulated his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin on election victory and reaffirmed his readiness for joint work in multilateral formats.
Russia held its first-ever three-day presidential election on March 15-17. According to data from the Central Election Commission (CEC), incumbent who ran as an independent, self-nominated candidate, garnered 87.28% of the vote, with 100% of the ballots counted.
The voter turnout was the highest in Russia’s modern history, with 77.44% of eligible voters going to the polls.
Official results from the three-day ballot, in which all credible opposition was barred, show 71-year-old Putin winning a landslide with almost 76 million votes.
Ramaphosa said both countries had mutual cooperation at the multilateral level, including common membership of the United Nations (UN), the Group of 20 (G20), BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) and other multilateral bodies.
The Kremlin had cast the election as a moment for Russians to throw their weight behind the full-scale military operation in Ukraine, now in its third year.
Ramaphosa added, that South Africa would continue to engage both Russia and Ukraine in search of lasting peace between the two warring neighbouring countries.
Meanwhile Western nations have widely condemned Russia’s presidential election, in which Putin claimed a landslide victory that will keep him in power until at least 2030 amid a crackdown on dissent and opposition.
In Washington, the state department spokesperson Vedant Patel denounced the election as “undemocratic” and said the US would not congratulate Putin. “This was an incredibly undemocratic process,” Patel told reporters, detailing the jailing and disqualification of opponents and Navalny’s death in an Arctic penal colony. “He is likely to remain the president of Russia, but that does not excuse him of his autocracy,” Patel said.
Calling Russia a dictatorship, a German government spokesperson said the chancellor, Olaf Scholz, would not congratulate Putin on his re-election in a vote viewed by Berlin as “predetermined”.
Chinese President Xi Jinping, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan congratulated Putin, as did North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and the presidents of nations that have historic and current ties to Russia, such as Azerbaijan and Belarus.
In a victory speech on Sunday, Putin dismissed western criticism of the election as unfair and undemocratic, telling his supporters it was “expected”. He also for the first time addressed Navalny’s death, which he called a “sad event”.