In the spirit of Orwell’s 1984: the Ukrainian community’s reaction to the elections in Russia
18 March 2024 16:31
Presidential elections were held in Russia, in which, according to preliminary results, Vladimir Putin won – he allegedly received 87.28% of the vote. Komersant ukrainskyi 
has collected the reaction of the Ukrainian community to the recent elections and the “unexpected” victory of the dictator.
On his Facebook page, MPOleksiy Kucherenko offered to guess how many percent Putin would get in the presidential election.
“What is your prediction? Putin-88%? Or Putin-92%? Or 102%?”
– kucherenko asked.
Meanwhile, former deputy head of the CEC Andriy Mahera gave an almost exact percentage of votes for Putin.
“Putin’s ‘victory’ will be 88%. He is prone to numerology to show everyone how he will rule forever. In addition, he needs to show a record percentage in the fifth ‘election’. Moreover, in the occupied territories, an even higher percentage will be shown for propaganda purposes. I think it will be around 90%,”
– magera believes.
Volunteer Oleksandr Aronets compared the elections in Russia to Orwell’s 1984:
“In the occupied Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions, the Russians drew a turnout of 100%. This is where not even half of the population is present, where cities are completely destroyed. I wouldn’t be surprised if the turnout in Bakhmut and Avdiivka was 300%. Everything is in the spirit of Orwell’s 1984. The more absurd and untrue it is, the easier it is to sell. Only now it is not fiction, but reality.”
According to Hanna Malyar, former Deputy Minister of Defence of Ukraine, after the elections in Russia, Putin became illegitimate.
“From a legal point of view, there is not a single sign of a legitimate election. “The ‘elections’ held in the temporarily occupied territories violate all the norms and principles of electoral rights. In addition, there were no elections in the regions bordering Ukraine. We need to understand that after these elections, Russia will not have a legitimate head of state. There will be a person who seized power,”
– she wrote on her Facebook page.
Iryna Vereshchuk, Deputy Prime Minister of Ukraine and head of the Ministry of Reintegration, also reacted to the elections in Russia. She called on the world to refuse to recognise Putin’s legitimacy if he wins:
“If the civilised world once refused to recognise Lukashenko as president of Belarus, then, following the results of the presidential elections in Russia, the world should refuse to recognise Putin as the head of Russia.”
Victor Shlinchak, Chairman of the Board of the Institute of World Policy, believes that if we look for any positive in the Russian elections, it will be the last term of President Putin:
“According to the statistics of all secretaries general, they did not live more than -76 years. Putin is 72 years old. There are 6 years of another presidential term ahead. Even this time, the Kremlin’s technologists found it very difficult to “sell” the “forever young, forever drunk”. In six years, he could hardly be crowned. Or maybe he can be sainted. But this is where the positive ends. Because Putin will also want to remain in the people’s memory for this term. And the policy of his entourage will be shaped exclusively to fulfil the main idea of the tsar – to strengthen the Empire.”
Author: Alyona Kaplina
