West divided as Ukraine urges allies to boycott Putin swearing-in

PARIS/LONDON: Germany and most European Union countries looked poised to boycott a Kremlin ceremony to swear in Vladimir Putin for a new six-year term on Tuesday, though France and several others were expected to send an envoy in spite of an appeal by Kyiv.

The varying diplomatic response by the Western powers underscored a difference of opinion over how to handle the Russian leader more than two years after he launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. It was unclear if the US or Britain would attend the ceremony.

Putin won a landslide victory in a presidential election in March just weeks after his most prominent opponent Alexei Navalny died in jail. Western governments condemned the re-election as unfair and undemocratic.

“Ukraine sees no legal grounds for recognizing him as the democratically elected and legitimate president of the Russian Federation,” the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.Tuesday’s swearing-in ceremony, it said, sought to create “the illusion of legality for the nearly lifelong stay in power of a person who has turned the Russian Federation into an aggressor state and the ruling regime into a dictatorship.” A senior Kremlin official said it had invited the heads of all the foreign diplomatic missions in Moscow to attend Putin’s inauguration, the Interfax news agency reported.A European diplomat told Reuters that 20 EU member states would boycott the event, but that seven others were expected to send a representative.