白宫：川普不打算祝贺普京连任

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.”

普京再次当选俄罗斯总统后不久，白宫表示，普京当选在意料之中，川普总统不打算祝贺普京连任。

白宫发言人霍干·吉德利说，美国将在可以合作的领域同俄罗斯合作。他说：“我们会培养和俄罗斯的关系。我们将在俄罗斯危害我们利益的时候让他们付出代价，但是，我们将在符合我国利益的情况下寻找合作的领域。”

俄罗斯星期一正式公布的选举结果显示，普京以77%的票数第四次当选总统。包括欧洲安全与合作组织的彼得森大使在内的在莫斯科的国际观察人士说，这次选举“缺乏真正的竞争” 。

观察人士还说，这次竞选问题很多，其中包括“限制集会、结社和言论等基本自由，并且限制候选人登记，这些都限制了政治参与的空间”。

普京的最有人气、最有实力的对手阿列克谢·纳瓦尔尼在组织了抗议普京的活动之后被禁止参加竞选。纳瓦尔尼说，违规现象是前所未有的，而且，俄罗斯政府在全国驱赶选民去投票，以实现高投票率。

“你可以看出来，很多票是在早晨投的，这在俄罗斯历史上是第一次。大多数选民在早晨8点钟来到投票站，任何清醒的人都不会说这是正常的。他们所有的人都是被赶去的。我们知道发生了这种情况。这确实是为普京连任而组织策划的选举。”

一些投票站的录像显示，有些人把好几张选票塞入票箱。

前美国驻俄罗斯大使、大西洋理事会研究员亚历山大·韦士伯也认为，这次选举中没有竞争。他说：“候选人在这个政治舞台上显然都扮演了自己的角色，以便使选举看起来像是有竞争。但实际上这是一场闹剧，而不是真正的竞选。当然是一场假面舞会。”

他还说：“如果川普总统祝贺普京在这场所谓的选举中获胜，我会感到非常失望。”