By Stefan J. Bos, Chief International Correspondent Worthy News
MOSCOW/BUDAPEST (Worthy News) – Vladimir Putin has been sworn into his fifth term as Russia’s president despite a war that has killed and injured hundreds of thousands of people and concerns about nuclear drills.
Putin’s inauguration came a day after he ordered Russian forces to rehearse deploying tactical nuclear weapons as part of military drills to respond to what he called “threats” by the West.
Since invading Ukraine in 2022, Putin repeatedly made veiled threats to use tactical nuclear weapons against the West, but Monday marked the first time Russia has publicly announced drills.
“During the exercises, a set of measures will be carried out to practice the issues of preparation and use of non-strategic nuclear weapons,” Russia’s defense ministry said.
Putin also spoke about protecting Russian interests during the lavish inauguration ceremony in Moscow. It was attended by Russia’s political elite but boycotted by Britain, the United States, and most European envoys.
Yet France’s ambassador to Moscow represented Paris at the inauguration on Tuesday, a day after the envoy was summoned to the Russian foreign ministry in a move France denounced as intimidation.
Pierre Levy was present at the ceremony in the Kremlin, the French foreign ministry said.
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Several other major European nations were not represented among the 2,500 dignitaries giving Putin red carpet treatment in the halls of the Kremlin.
Russia had on Monday summoned the French ambassador to the foreign ministry in Moscow to condemn the “provocative” policies of President Emmanuel Macron.
“The Russian side presented its assessment that Paris’s destructive and provocative line is leading to an escalation of the conflict,” the Russian foreign ministry explained.
In a recent interview, Macron said he was “not ruling anything out” in the West’s response to the conflict in Ukraine, including sending troops to the country.
The armed conflict didn’t impact the recent election outcome, with officials saying Putin won a landslide victory with more than 87 percent of the vote in the March presidential election.
Critics said that with most of his serious political opponents either dead, exiled, or jailed, his victory had been a foregone conclusion.
Vote rigging and massive propaganda by state media also contributed to his claimed victory, watchdogs say.
SNOWY AFFAIR
Unlike the sunny inauguration of 2018, this year’s version was gray and snowy, allowing the pro-Kremlin camp to shower Putin with praise for braving the cold without a hat.
In a short speech after taking the oath of office and promising to defend the Russian Constitution — which was altered to allow him to run again following a controversial 2020 referendum — Putin vowed to “place the interests and safety of the Russian people above all else.”
One notable attendee was Russia’s Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, who is rumored to have fallen from favor with the Kremlin after his deputy was arrested recently for corruption.
Another attention-grabbing appearance was that of Chechen strongman Ramzan Kadyrov, who has ruled the Russian region of Chechnya with an iron fist.
He was conspicuously absent from Putin’s state-of-the-nation address in February and is said to be terminally ill, though he has not confirmed this.
Kadyrov was caught on camera being helped out of his coat, leading some to comment that he is either too ill or too despotic to do it himself.
Commentators noted that besides France, the list of foreign dignitaries reportedly included envoys from several European countries such as Hungary and Slovakia, among Europe’s most pro-Russia nations, as well as Malta, Cyprus, and Greece.
That underscored concerns over mounting division among Western countries on how to deal with Putin amid calls by Russia’s opposition to declare him illegitimate at a time of a mounting war death toll in Europe.
Copyright 1999-2024 Worthy News. This article was originally published on Worthy News and was reproduced with permission.
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