White House says there was ‘noth­ing free or fair’ about Putin reelec­tion

The White House slammed Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin‘s lat­est reelec­tion on Mon­day, say­ing there was “noth­ing free or fair” about it.
Putin won his fifth pres­i­den­tial elec­tion over the week­end, secur­ing the Russ­ian leader anoth­er six years in office and tight­en­ing his grip over the coun­try in an elec­tion that offered vot­ers no viable alter­na­tives to his rule.
Nation­al secu­ri­ty advis­er Jake Sul­li­van said the results were “pre­or­dained” dur­ing the White House press brief­ing.
“Noth­ing about the elec­tion out­come was unpre­dictable because Putin had closed the polit­i­cal space, had locked up polit­i­cal oppo­nents, some of his polit­i­cal oppo­nents had trag­i­cal­ly died,” Sul­li­van said, “and so there was noth­ing free or fair about this elec­tion, and the out­come was pre­or­dained.”
Russia’s Cen­tral Elec­tion Com­mis­sion said Putin obtained near­ly 88% of the vote in ear­ly returns. The elec­tion was the first since the begin­ning of the war in Ukraine and came just one month after the death of Putin’s largest crit­ic, Alex­ei Navalny.CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FRO …