白宮：川普不打算祝賀普京連任

Hours after Russian President Vladimir Putin won re-election, White House officials said his victory was no surprise, and they have no plans for President Trump to call Putin to congratulate him on the victory.

White House spokesman Hogan Gidley said the United States will work with Russia where it can.“We will work to cultivate the relationship with Russia and we will impose costs when Russia threatens our interests, but we will also look for places to work together when it serves our interests,” Gidley said.

Official results Monday show Putin won his fourth term with 77 percent of the vote. The election “lacked real competition” according to International Observers in Moscow, including Ambassador Jan Petersen of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

Observers also said the election campaign was flawed by “restrictions on the fundamental freedoms of assembly, association and expression as well as on candidate registration and those have limited the space for political engagement.”

Putin's most popular and formidable opponent, Alexei Navanly was barred from the ballot after organizing nationwide protests again Putin. Navalny said there were uNPRecedented violations, and that all over the country, the Russian government drove people to the polls to make sure turnout was high.

“You can see that the turnout, for the first time in Russian history, has moved to the morning. So most of the voters came to polls at 8 a.m. Well, it's unlikely that any sane person could say it's a normal course of voting. All of them were driven there. Well, we understand that happened, it was a true (organized) re-election of Putin.”

Video surfaced from a number of different polling places in Russia of people stuffing multiple ballots into boxes.

Alexander Vershbow is a former U.S. Ambassador to Russia, and a fellow at the Atlantic Council. He agreed that there was no real competition for the election.

“Candidates obviously played their roles in this political theater, so that it all looks like a competition, but it's more of a farce than real elections. It's a masquerade, of course.”

Vershbow added: “I will be really disappointed if President Trump congratulates Putin with his win in this so-called election.”普京再次當選俄羅斯總統後不久，白宮表示，普京當選在意料之中，川普總統不打算祝賀普京連任。

白宮發言人霍幹·吉德利說，美國將在可以合作的領域同俄羅斯合作。他說：“我們會培養和俄羅斯的關係。我們將在俄羅斯危害我們利益的時候讓他們付出代價，但是，我們將在符合我國利益的情況下尋找合作的領域。”

俄羅斯星期一正式公佈的選舉結果顯示，普京以77%的票數第四次當選總統。包括歐洲安全與合作組織的彼得森大使在內的在莫斯科的國際觀察人士說，這次選舉“缺乏真正的競爭” 。

觀察人士還說，這次競選問題很多，其中包括“限制集會、結社和言論等基本自由，並且限制候選人登記，這些都限制了政治參與的空間”。

普京的最有人氣、最有實力的對手阿列克謝·納瓦爾尼在組織了抗議普京的活動之後被禁止參加競選。納瓦爾尼說，違規現象是前所未有的，而且，俄羅斯政府在全國驅趕選民去投票，以實現高投票率。

“你可以看出來，很多票是在早晨投的，這在俄羅斯歷史上是第一次。大多數選民在早晨8點鐘來到投票站，任何清醒的人都不會說這是正常的。他們所有的人都是被趕去的。我們知道發生了這種情況。這確實是爲普京連任而組織策劃的選舉。”

一些投票站的錄像顯示，有些人把好幾張選票塞入票箱。

前美國駐俄羅斯大使、大西洋理事會研究員亞歷山大·韋士伯也認爲，這次選舉中沒有競爭。他說：“候選人在這個政治舞臺上顯然都扮演了自己的角色，以便使選舉看起來像是有競爭。但實際上這是一場鬧劇，而不是真正的競選。當然是一場假面舞會。”

他還說：“如果川普總統祝賀普京在這場所謂的選舉中獲勝，我會感到非常失望。”