Eduardo González
The Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, has stated that the electoral process in Russia was “very far from democratic elections with the necessary guarantees” and warned that Spain and the EU do not grant “any legitimacy” to the “mock election” in the “militarily occupied Ukrainian territories.”
“There has been a mock election in the militarily occupied territories of Ukraine,” declared the minister upon his arrival at the meeting of the EU Foreign Affairs Council, which was held yesterday in Brussels.
The presidential electoral process in Russia, organized between March 15 and 17 by the Government of President Vladimir Putin, was “very far, to put it diplomatically, from what we consider in the EU and in Spain to be democratic elections with the necessary guarantees.” and, of course, we do not grant any legitimacy nor can any rights be derived from the processes that may have taken place in militarily occupied Ukrainian territories,” he warned.
Albares therefore adheres to the position of the EU, which has denounced, in a statement, that the elections have taken place “in a restricted environment for opposition politicians, independent media and other voices critical of the regime” and in a context “of censorship even for those candidates who opposed Russia’s illegal war of aggression against Ukraine.”
The Union also condemns the elections held in the territories of Ukraine that “have been temporarily occupied by Russia: Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol, as well as in parts of the Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions.”
“These elections also represent a violation of international law by Russia, including the Charter of the United Nations and the independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine,” warns the EU, which “calls on Russia to respect borders and internationally recognized sovereignty in Ukraine” and reaffirms that it will not recognize “the value of these elections in the territories of Ukraine that have been occupied, which it considers null and void and without the capacity to produce any legal effect.”
