Vladimir Putin has protested about the
UK meddling in his election, and told
diplomats to worry instead about
Britain where “a crisis of power is clearly brewing” in veiled comments about the Royal Family. Putin won his fifth term in office this week in the controversial elections, but he has called the UK’s chargé d’affaires in
Moscow, Tom Dodd, to the
Russian Foreign Ministry for a rap over alleged interference. The Russians hit out at “unacceptable propaganda publications by
British diplomatic missions in our country during the
election for Russian president” They were “presented in a poster style and geared toward disrupting the electoral process in
Russia ’s new territories”. Russia had “no legal grounds” for holding
elections in occupied Ukrainian territory. A message posted by Britain’s consul general in Yekaterinburg Ameer Kotecha said: “All of them are part of
Ukraine , and holding elections here will not make these territories Russian." The Russian foreign ministry said: “We stressed the absolute inadmissibility of such activities, which are seen as interference in Russia’s domestic affairs and a hostile attempt at exerting pressure on the independent electoral system in our country and influencing the election results. The Prince and Princess of Wales ( Image: Getty Images) “Despite the West’s aggressive attempts to discredit the presidential election in Russia, its outcome vividly demonstrated the unprecedented union of the Russian people who support the incumbent head of state and his policy. It was recommended that the embassy should better focus on the situation in the
United Kingdom where a crisis of power is clearly brewing.” This came as senior Russian Foreign Ministry official Maria Zakharova waded into speculation over the royals. She posted: “It turned out that previous photographs of the English
Royal Family are also photomontages. Do you now understand how the whole story with the Skripals was concocted in London?” She implied British fakery was behind the poisoning with nerve agent Novichok of turncoat GRU agent
Sergei Skripal who had secretly spied for Britain before living in exile in
Salisbury, and his daughter Yulia in 2018. Ms Zakharova is spokeswoman for Putin’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov, and holds the rank Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary. Britain insists the incident - which led to the murder of local woman Dawn Sturgess - was an assassination bid carried out by the GRU, Russian
MILITARY intelligence. This week pro-Putin media outlets carried a fake story that King Charles had died.