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Automatically translated version. May contain inaccuracies compared to the original.
Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna said that the upcoming elections to the Russian State Duma cannot be considered a genuine expression of citizens' will. He published his statement on 6 September. Tsahkna emphasized that the voting results are decided even before the ballots are counted. He compared the electoral process in Russia to a performance, not a real expression of will.
The Estonian minister shared on X an analytical publication by the International Centre for Defence and Security about the upcoming Russian elections, where the headline put forward the thesis that the results will be determined in the Kremlin. Tsahkna added his own comment about the nature of the electoral process in Russia.
"The Kremlin decides who can run, controls the process, and the results are determined before the ballots are counted. These are not elections, this is a Kremlin-controlled performance," Margus Tsahkna wrote.
Meanwhile, European Commissioner for Defence Andrius Kubilius ironically welcomed Putin's desire to "remove the root causes of the war."
Occupied territories will be involved in voting for the first time
Elections to the new convocation of the State Duma of Russia are scheduled for 18–20 September. The Kremlin plans to hold voting for the first time in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine — in the so-called "LPR," "DPR," and in the occupied parts of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions. It is in these districts that former First Deputy Prime Minister of Ukraine Serhiy Arbuzov will run, having been nominated in districts that include the occupied territories, Crimea, and Sevastopol.
Tsahkna's statement also came against the backdrop of elections on 6 September in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt, after which the state government could, for the first time in history, be headed by a premier from the far-right "Alternative for Germany."
Earlier, Informator reported that Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna said the EU is preparing the 21-th package of sanctions against Russia, which will primarily affect the country's energy sector. According to him, Europe should take advantage of the political changes in Hungary and make the decisions necessary to support Ukraine.
Document: PDF proof of the original version of the news item "Глава МЗС Естонії назвав вибори до Держдуми РФ контрольованою Кремлем виставою". It records the publication content at the moment of the first scan, the preservation date and the source: Informator.
