American President Donald Trump declared on Friday that his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, shares his opinion that mail-in voting jeopardizes the integrity of elections.
„Vladimir Putin, a smart guy, said that you can’t have fair elections with mail-in voting. He said that there is no country in the world using it now,” Trump stated on Fox News after a nearly three-hour meeting with the Russian leader in Alaska.
Trump, who continues to promote the false narrative that he, not Democrat Joe Biden, won the 2020 elections, cited Putin's agreement on mail-in voting to press his Republican colleagues to more firmly support electoral reforms.
The former American president has voted by mail in previous elections and recommended his supporters to do the same in 2024.
Putin, in power in Russia since 1999, was reelected in 2024 with 87% of the votes in an election marked by accusations of fraud and the absence of real opposition following the death of dissident leader Alexei Navalny in an Arctic penal colony.
Trump's statements come as the US Department of Justice and Senate have documented Russia's attempts to influence American electoral campaigns in 2016 and 2020 in its favor, while US intelligence services believe Moscow would prefer Trump to win again in 2024.
Although nearly thirty countries, including Canada, Germany, and South Korea, allow mail-in voting under certain conditions, Trump insisted that the United States cannot have "a great democracy" if it keeps mail-in voting.