The EU does not have an agreed position on whether we recognize Putin as a legitimate president - Stano
Kyiv • UNN
The EU does not have an agreed position on whether or not to recognize Vladimir Putin as the legitimate president of Russia, but all 27 member states have recognized that the elections in Russia were not transparent.
The EU has no agreed position on whether to recognize Vladimir Putin as the legitimate president of Russia. Instead, all 27 member states recognized that the elections in Russia were not transparent. This was stated at a briefing by the EU foreign policy spokesperson Peter Stano, reports UNN.
Details
Speaking about the issue of recognizing Putin as president of the Russian Federation, Stano said: "As far as recognition is concerned, the EU as such does not deal with recognition, the power to recognize belongs to the member states and is usually associated with states and countries.
"Of course, when member states unanimously say with 27 votes that they do not consider someone to be a legitimate representative of a country, as we did in the case of Syrian leader Assad or the dictator in Belarus Lukashenko, then we can have such a position. In the case of Russia, there is no pan-European position agreed by 27 countries that says we do not see Putin as a legitimate representative of Russia," the spokesman said.
According to him, "the fact of life is that he sits in the Kremlin, from the Kremlin he directs one of the most brutal and bloody aggressions in the modern history of Europe - the aggression against Ukraine. He is part of the problem. (...) we all stated in a statement agreed by 27 member states on March 18 how we see the 'elections' that in the eyes of Moscow confirmed him in this position that he holds in the Kremlin.
"So, again, the EU's position when it comes to Venezuela, Belarus and Syria, for example, has been agreed by 27 member states in defining how we see these people staying in power... In the case of Russia, we have decided as 27 countries on the process of Putin's so-called re-election, but there is no agreed position in the EU on whether we recognize Putin as a legitimate president. The fact is, again, he sits in the Kremlin, he makes the decisions," Stano summarized.
