Russian President Vladimir Putin was sworn in for the fifth time in a row. He took oath in a ceremony despite the boycott of many countries of the United States and the European Union. Vladimir Putin was sworn in at the ornate St Andrew's Hall in Moscow's Grand Kremlin Palace at around 1.30pm local time on Tuesday (May 7).
The 71-year-old leader became Russia's president for a fifth consecutive term on Tuesday after winning 87 percent of the vote in March's presidential election.
All government and private television channels broadcast the swearing-in ceremony live.
All high-ranking officials of the Russian government and foreign diplomats were invited to attend the swearing-in ceremony. The French Ambassador to Moscow, Pierre Levy, was also invited and attended.
Incidentally, there is a lot of bitterness between Paris and Moscow over the military operation in Ukraine.
However, the ambassadors of Poland, Germany and the Czech Republic were not seen at the event. The foreign ministries of the three countries said their ambassadors were ordered not to attend the swearing-in ceremony in protest against the “unjust” operation by Russian forces in Ukraine.
In 1996, Vladimir Putin joined the Soviet Union's intelligence agency, the KGB, as a high-ranking official. Later, he became the provisional president of Russia in 1999 due to the brutality of the then Russian president Boris Yeltsin. Yeltsin retired from politics that year handing over power to Putin.
Later, in the 2000 presidential election, Putin won the presidential election for the first time with 53 percent of the vote. In the 2004 election, he got 71.3 percent of the votes and became the president again.
Like the United States, Russia's constitution did not allow a person to serve more than two terms as president. Therefore, in the 2008 elections, he nominated his faithful follower Dmitry Medvedev as a candidate and himself became the prime ministerial candidate. Both Medvedev and Putin won that election.
But after winning the 2012 elections again, he increased the term of the president from 4 years to 6 years and canceled the obligation not to run for more than two presidential elections. Later he won the 2018 election as well.
Source: AFP
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