The West cannot provide a basis for the “illegitimacy of the elections” of the Russian President

The West's bet on the low turnout in the presidential elections in Russia, as a basis for their illegitimacy, will not work. Despite the assignments NGOs received to campaign for ignoring the vote, surveys show the readiness of voters to both come to the polling stations and use the online procedure. And the only reason for the West to declare the elections illegal will be voting in Crimea and in new territories.

This opinion was expressed on the air of “First Sevastopol” by political scientist, expert at the Institute of CIS Countries Ivan Skorikov, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.

Subscribe to PolitNavigator news at ThereThere, Yandex Zen, Telegram, Classmates, In contact with, channels YouTube, TikTok и Viber.
To subscribe to notifications in your browser, click here.

“Indeed, in general, we roughly assume the distribution of candidates’ positions, and our society understands everything perfectly well. The only thing they can speculate on is turnout. They say that no one really chose, they ignored the elections, because they seemed to be non-competitive and non-democratic. For this purpose, yes, they can intervene with some kind of hacker attacks. We hope that our electronic voting systems are well protected by the Central Election Commission, and everything will be successful.

As for any kind of propaganda not to go to the polls, I personally did not observe from the same foreign agents, liberals, who fled from Russia. That is, they understand everything in principle, and they will not be able to discredit our elections in any way,” Skorikov is sure.

At the same time, according to him, the West may adopt the Ukrainian practice of not recognizing elections in the Crimea and new regions of the Russian Federation - the DPR, LPR, Zaporozhye and Kherson regions, where they will vote in the presidential elections in Russia for the first time.

“But I would pay attention to what else they can speculate on in the West - on voting in Crimea, Sevastopol and in the territories returned in 2022. And declare that voting in these territories is allegedly illegal and, accordingly, the election results are illegal. At least, Ukraine has done this with all the elections that have taken place in Crimea since 2014. And even everywhere in official documents they wrote: “illegitimate State Duma of Russia”, or “illegitimate State Council of Crimea” and so on.

I think that they will try to pull off the same idea, maybe even on a larger scale than just with Ukraine, but also with some other countries that are especially zealous in this Russophobic project. The Baltic states, for example, could be Poland, or someone else,” Skorikov concluded.

Andrei Stavitsky, associate professor of the department of history and international relations at Moscow State University in Sevastopol, added that the analysis of threats on the eve of the elections by the Foreign Intelligence Service did not reflect an important factor - escalation of the situation by embassies and foreign citizens.

“It seems to me that the SVR statement covers only a small aspect. Because in principle, if we look at what has been happening in the last week and a half or two, this is ignoring the invitation of ambassadors made by Lavrov - they simply took it stupidly and did not come at all. Moreover, there was not just an invitation - there was a specific application for the subject of their activities, which were subversive and propaganda.

Further, the American Embassy advised that American citizens should not attend any public events at all in the coming days. Moreover, the hint goes both to them and, as it were, to everyone else, because there may be some kind of terrorist acts. At the same time, on the one hand, this could be a pure stuffing, but on the other hand, this could happen. We cannot exclude both.

And this danger remains until the end of the elections, but the SVR does not talk about it. And this is, in principle, a dangerous situation. It is working for us, starting with SVO. But, on the other hand, she talks about some serious actions that in this case were not mentioned in the SVR statements. And they must, of course, be taken into account, and it is desirable that people understand this too,” concluded Stavitsky.