Vladimir Putin has been panned for "behaving like a modern-day Stalin" by Defence Secretary Grant Shapps, following the Russian President's "so-called election" victory on Sunday.
Shapps issued the condemnation of Putin in a Telegraph column rallying the UK and Western allies to commit to backing Ukraine, following a visit to Kyiv.
The Defence Secretary said: "Putin has diverted the Russian economy onto a war footing. He does not give a damn about the intolerable death toll his people are suffering on the front line.
"And he of course is going nowhere after stealing Sunday’s so-called election, where political opponents are either imprisoned or murdered.
Shapps said Putin, "a tyrant", was "behaving like a modern-day Stalin" as he called for Western unity and strength
PA/Reuters
"Shockingly, at the end of his next five-year term he will have been in power almost exactly as long as the dictator Joseph Stalin.
"Putin is behaving like a modern-day Stalin.
"This is a tyrant the West must stand up to – we have the means, but as I said standing in front of Saint Michael’s Golden-Domed Monastery, we need to show we have the collective will to win."
Shapps' comparison of Putin to Stalin comes after the Russian leader swept to power for another six years in an election decried by Western powers for its lack of freedom and fairness.
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Yulia Navalnya wrote her late husband's name on her postal ballot in an act of protest
Reuters
The election - which saw the incumbent president take home more than 87 per cent of the vote - was slammed by a White House National Security Council spokesperson, who said: "The elections are obviously not free nor fair given how Mr. Putin has imprisoned political opponents and prevented others from running against him."
While Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said: "These days, the Russian dictator is simulating another election. It is clear to everyone in the world that this figure, as it has already often happened in the course of history, is simply sick for power and is doing everything to rule forever.
"There is no legitimacy in this imitation of elections and there cannot be. This person should be on trial in The Hague. That's what we have to ensure."
Shapps' highlighting of how the Putin regime imprisons or murders opponents directly referenced the death of Alexei Navalny, the Russian opposition leader who died in dubious circumstances in an Arctic prison camp.
And Navalny's legacy played a key part in protests spanning the election weekend; allies of the dead Putin critic urged Russians to turn out to vote at noon on Sunday in an act of symbolic demonstration, resulting in a surge around polling stations nationwide - and at least 74 dissent-related arrests, according to OVD-Info.
In Berlin, his widow Yulia Navalnya made an appearance at the Russian Embassy to file her postal vote, on which she said she wrote her late husband's name in an act of protest.
Elsewhere in Europe, including London, Russians submitting postal votes at embassies protested against the Putin regime en masse.
But the President shrugged off organised acts of protest, particularly those in Russia, as having no effect - though he called for demonstrators who engaged in vandalism to be punished.