“Do not recognize the presidential election in Russia in March”

Yulia Navalnaya, the widow of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, has asked the European Union to refuse to recognize Russia’s presidential election in March, in a step that escalates her campaign against Vladimir Putin. Navalny, 47, who has blamed Putin for her husband’s murder, attacked the Kremlin leader and called for Russia to be freed from what she described as a corrupt elite of “bandits in uniform, thieves and murderers”.