The president made the remarks on Friday during a meeting with permanent members of the Russian National Security Council. Putin condemned the efforts made by Kiev to disrupt the ongoing election, vowing retaliation for the attacks.
In order to disrupt the voting process and intimidate people, at least in the regions bordering Ukraine, the Kiev neo-Nazi regime has conceived and is trying to carry out a series of “demonstrative criminal armed actions”, Putin stated.
The effort includes continuous indiscriminate drone and artillery strikes, as well as a concentrated effort to breach the country’s border, launched by Ukrainian forces earlier this week, the president explained, describing Kiev’s actions as “senseless from the military, and criminal from a humanitarian standpoint”.
The escalation may also be used as a PR stunt for Kiev to show the Ukrainian public and its Western backers some military gains, Putin suggested.
As for trying to intimidate the Russian people, the Ukrainian leadership will never achieve such a goal, with the country’s people responding to such actions only with “further consolidation”, he added.
“Another possible goal of such actions is to divert the attention of their own people and the public in other countries, whom the Kiev regime is trying to beg for money and all sorts of handouts, to divert attention from the real situation on the front line,” the president stated.
According to Moscow’s estimates, the Ukrainian military has deployed over 2,500 servicemen, some 35 tanks and around 40 other armored vehicles to attack multiple locations along the border, Putin noted. All the attacks have been repelled, with the Ukrainians sustaining heavy personnel and material casualties.
Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova also told Sputnik unfriendly countries have tried to do everything to disrupt the process of voting of Russians abroad in the presidential election but they have failed.
The spokeswoman was asked about the decrease in the number of polling stations abroad.
“But in terms of the number of [polling] stations, there are indeed significantly less this time. For one simple reason: these are precisely the actions of those very unfriendly regimes that are doing everything in order to prevent, disrupt, intimidate our citizens, and exert political pressure but they see no success,” Zakharova said.
The extent to which US media has become fixated on the Russian presidential election is bizarre given the distance between the two countries and the differences in their historical trajectories, the spokeswoman highlighted.
Zakharova pointed out the attention with which US television channels are following the election in Russia adding that the US media appeared unable to wean themselves from the old narratives that Moscow allegedly influences presidential elections in the US.
“They really treat our elections as if we are electing both our president and a person who will also be governing the US, just a little. That is how they present it, anyway,” she added.
Virtually every US broadcaster has slotted time to cover the Russian presidential election daily for several month, according to the spokeswoman.
“I have not a single example of this happening to countries that are located on different continents and do not have common [land] borders or any obvious mutual influence of electoral cycles. There are countries that were previously united by a common state space or some historical space, and indeed, there may be some connections there. But nothing like that connects us with the US,” Zakharova continued.