As we’ve been reporting, Yulia Navalnaya, the widow of Putin’s most vocal critic Alexei Navalny, voted in Berlin’s Russian embassy earlier today.
Writing in Washington Post several days earlier, she urged the West to realise who the Russian president really was – a “gangster”.
“I urge you to finally hear the voice of free Russia and take a principled stand against him – to not recognise the results of the falsified elections, to not recognise Putin as the legitimate president of Russia,” she wrote in an op-ed last week.
She also argued that currently “too many people in the West still see him as a legitimate political leader” and seek “political logic” in his actions.
“This is a big mistake that breeds new mistakes and helps Putin to deceive his opponents again and again.”
In her closing remarks, she said the world must “finally realise that Putin is not who he wants to appear to be. He is a usurper, a tyrant, a war criminal – and a murderer.”