While most European Union member states, as well as the US, UK and Canada, are expected to boycott the fifth inauguration ceremony of President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday (7 May) over Russia’s war on Ukraine, France, Hungary and Slovakia are set to send representatives.
Putin won a landslide re-election in March, handing him another six-year term until 2030, only weeks after his most prominent opponent, Aleksey Navalny, died in a Siberian prison. The polls have been widely condemned as illegitimate.
Ahead of Tuesday’s ceremony, Western countries early this week ruled out that their representatives would attend the event, including the Baltic states, the Czech Republic, the UK and Canada.
“We do not celebrate with [an] aggressor. It’s also worth reminding that Putin is wanted for war crimes,” Estonia’s Foreign Minister Margus Tsakhna said about his country’s decision not to attend.
Some 20 EU member states would not attend, EU diplomats told Euractiv, while Reuters also reported that seven others would send representatives.
A French diplomatic source told Reuters that “France will be represented by its ambassador to Russia.”
This is despite Paris’ position on Russia becoming more hawkish over the past few weeks after French President Emmanuel Macron did not rule out sending troops to Ukraine.
The French ambassador will be joined by representatives from Hungary and Slovakia, both of which maintain close ties to Russia and an ambiguous position on its war against Ukraine.
Both Budapest and Bratislava have so far refused to provide arms to Kyiv but have not prevented any EU decisions.
EU says ‘no’
The letters of invitation to the ceremony had been received by EU member states and the EU delegation in Moscow, the bloc’s lead foreign affairs spokesperson Peter Stano told reporters on Monday (6 May) in Brussels.
“We are currently discussing with EU member states the form of our response (…) we always try to have a coordinated EU approach wherever possible (…) The final decision has not been made yet,” Stano then said.
Late Monday evening, an EU spokesperson said the bloc’s ambassador to Russia would not attend the inauguration, a position aimed to be coordinated among all of the bloc’s member states.
“Our EU ambassador will not be attending, most of the member states will not be attending, but a few member states will – at the level of an ambassador,” they said.
Ukraine’s plea
Putin’s inauguration was creating “the illusion of legality for the nearly lifelong stay in power of a person who has turned the Russian Federation into an aggressor state and the ruling regime into a dictatorship,” Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
“Ukraine sees no legal grounds for recognising him as the democratically elected and legitimate president of the Russian Federation,” it added, asking its allies not to attend.
