The United States and most European Union countries said they will skip Russian President Vladimir Putin’s swearing-in ceremony on Tuesday.
"We will not have a representative at his inauguration," Matthew Miller, U.S. State Department spokesman, said Monday.
A senior Kremlin official said the heads of all the foreign diplomatic missions in Moscow had been invited to attend the event, the Interfax news agency reported, according to Reuters.
Twenty EU member states plan to boycott Putin’s inauguration for a sixth term, but seven others are expected to send a representative, a European diplomat told Reuters.
Ukraine urged allies to not attend.
"Ukraine sees no legal grounds for recognizing him as the democratically elected and legitimate president of the Russian Federation," the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
Putin won nearly 88% of the vote in the presidential election in March, just weeks after his greatest political foe Alexey Navalny died in jail.
Western nations condemned the reelection as undemocratic.
The inauguration comes more than two years after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
France is expected to send a representative to the event despite Paris increasing its support for Ukraine in recent months. French President Emmanuel Macron said last week he would consider sending troops to Ukraine.
Germany's Foreign Ministry said it would not be represented at the inauguration, while Gabrielius Landsbergis, Lithuania’s foreign minister, said Russia must continue to be isolated because of its “criminal leader.”
"Participation in Putin's inauguration is not acceptable for Lithuania,” he said. “Our priority remains support for Ukraine and its people fighting against Russian aggression."
Some information for this report came from Reuters and Agence France-Presse.
