Seven EU states, including France, will attend the Kremlin ceremony to swear in Vladimir Putin for a new six-year term as president on Tuesday, Reuters reports.
On Monday, the Russian leader’s aide, Yury Ushakov, said the heads of all foreign diplomatic missions in Moscow were invited to attend the inauguration.
Twenty EU member states, including Poland and Germany, have signaled that they will not send representatives amid tensions over the Ukraine conflict, but the other seven states will participate, a European diplomat told the agency on condition of anonymity.
A diplomatic source in Paris separately told Reuters that “France will be represented by its ambassador to Russia,” Pierre Levy. On Monday, French President Emmanuel Macron said: “We are not at war with Russia or the Russian people, and we have no desire for regime change in Moscow.”
Apart from France, Hungary and Slovakia are both expected to attend, two diplomatic sources told Reuters.
The Czech Republic, as well as the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, which no longer have envoys in Moscow, will not attend the inauguration.
The US, UK, and Canada said they will not send anyone to attend the ceremony.
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