The Russian president Vladimir Putinrunning for a new six-year term in an election that his opponents call a travesty of democracy, said today that the last US election was rigged by mail-in.

“At USAin the previous election there was fraud through postal voting … they bought ballots for $10, filled them in and dropped them in mailboxes, without any supervision by observers, and that was it,” Putin said, without providing evidence for his claim this.

Opponents of Putin stress that Russia’s March presidential election is not a real election contest, as the president holds power unchallenged and his main rival, Alexei Navalnyis serving more than 30 years in prison on charges that Navalny says are trumped up.

Also, some critics of Putin say that the use of electronic voting creates room for authorities to undetectably manipulate the election result in Putin’s favor.

It is worth noting that the representative of the Kremlin Dmitry Peskov in August, according to the New York Times, he said that “Russian presidential elections are not really democracy, but costly bureaucracy” and that Putin will be re-elected next year with more than 90% of the vote.

Peskov later told Russia’s TASS news agency that his words were interpreted in a “completely wrong way,” saying simply that Putin enjoys unprecedented support from the Russian people.