“It's a very transparent process,” said attorney and CEO Steve Gill Tuesday after returning from a trip to Russia where he served as an international observer for the country’s presidential election.
Early projections showed Russian President Vladimir Putin will return to the Kremlin with a renewed mandate this year, garnering a healthy majority of the vote in a contest featuring the highest turnout in the country since 1991. Western media has criticized various aspects of the election, but Gill claimed everything ran smoothly from his vantage point in the southern Russian city of Samara. The former director of intergovernmental affairs for the US Trade Representative joined Sputnik’s The Final Countdown program on Tuesday to share his thoughts.
“I've probably visited in this trip 20 different polling stations, watching as people cast their vote,” said Gill. “First of all, they've got livestream video cameras in every precinct around the country, thousands of them… It is all livestreamed when the voting is taking place and then livestreamed when the counting is taking place.” Gill noted that election observers were allowed to be present at each polling location.
“It's a very visible process. Nobody was being forced at gunpoint,” he added, calling the election results a “super mandate” for Putin. “My advice to the West, to the US and Western Europe and Britain: pay attention to what the Russian people have said, not to what you wish they would say.”
Host Angie Wong noted that various world leaders congratulated Putin on his victory, including Chinese President Xi Jinping and India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi. “I haven't heard anything from Joe Biden yet,” she noted. “Usually you get a phone call… When is Joe Biden going to make that phone call, if ever?”
Gill said the US President would likely never acknowledge Putin’s support within Russia, to the detriment of US-Russian relations and US foreign policy more broadly.
“Our policy is to continue to push Russia towards China, who's a bigger economic and military adversary and threat to the United States,” he claimed. “So we're pushing them closer together, we're pushing Russia economically towards Saudi Arabia, towards India, towards the BRICS countries, Brazil and others. We're literally pushing them into the arms of – if not our adversaries, at least our competitors – in the economic world.”
“And Russia is realizing that their economy is booming despite the thousands of sanctions that have been imposed,” Gill added. “The main reasons that Vladimir Putin got reelected overwhelmingly by the Russian people is because they have 2.6% GDP [growth], they have 7% inflation.”
Russia’s economy has grown dramatically in the years since Putin was first elected President, recovering and surpassing the standard of living Russians enjoyed in the Soviet Union. In 2023 the Russian economy expanded more rapidly than any country in the G7 – something Putin often noted while campaigning.
Gill criticized the demonization of Russia under US President Joe Biden, claiming the country will eventually need to repair relations. Both countries would be better off, he claimed, if they were able to trade and cooperate economically as major world powers.
“World leaders see Biden for what he is,” he said. “Inept, incompetent, flailing; his policies are destroying the US economy and destroying our relationships around the world.”
“A weak America is not good to the world,” Gill warned. “A weak America isn't good really for China, for Russia or for the rest of the world – militarily, politically, or economically… A strong, vibrant, economically powerful and politically powerful around the world America is better for the world.”