Putin suffers election disaster – in Switzerland
Vladimir Putin has lost the Russian presidential election by a landslide, at least in Switzerland. This is shown by exit polls in Bern and Geneva. The result was the opposite of the 87% approval rating claimed by the official side in Russia.
In Bern, Putin received 16% of the vote, in Geneva 20%. In both cities, hundreds of Russians were interviewed in front of the embassy and the consulate general by members of the Russia of the Future/Switzerland association and volunteers. This was coordinated by the organisation Vote Abroad, Polina Petushkova from Russia of the Future/Switzerland told the Swiss News Agency Keystone-SDA.
Vladislav Davankov from the New People party, deputy head of the Duma parliamentary chamber, received the most votes. Alongside Leonid Slutsky and Nikolai Kharitonov, he was one of the three candidates authorised to stand for election in addition to Putin.
Davankov, 40, received 45% of the vote in Bern and 29% in Geneva, meaning he clearly outperformed Putin nationwide, according to the post-election poll. Around a fifth of voters spoilt their ballot papers.
+ Elections in Russia: what’s behind the Putin system and its retention of power?
Official regret
On Monday the Swiss government said it had taken note of the results of the presidential elections in Russia. The foreign ministry regretted that no OSCE election observer mission had been invited.
Relations with the Russian authorities would continue within the framework of international law, the foreign ministry added in response to an enquiry by Keystone-SDA.
The department once again condemned the so-called elections in the Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine. Switzerland does not recognise the annexation of Ukrainian territories by Russia. This constitutes a serious violation of the sovereignty and inviolability of the territory of Ukraine, it said.
Translated from German by DeepL/ts
This news story has been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team. At SWI swissinfo.ch we select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools such as DeepL to translate it into English. Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles.
If you want to know more about how we work, have a look here, and if you have feedback on this news story please write to english@swissinfo.ch.
In compliance with the JTI standards
More: SWI swissinfo.ch certified by the Journalism Trust Initiative
You can find an overview of ongoing debates with our journalists here. Please join us!
If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.