What they say:

Chirac:

French President Jacques Chirac spoke with President Bush by telephone, saying he was satisfied by the "participation rate and the good technical organization."

"These elections mark an important step in the political reconstruction of Iraq. The strategy of terrorist groups has partly failed," Chirac said, according to a French presidential spokesman.

Putin:

Russian President Vladimir Putin also praised the elections, calling them "a step in the right direction and a positive event," according to the ITAR-Tass news agency.

"The conditions for holding the elections were quite difficult, to put it mildly," Putin said after meeting in the Kremlin with Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas. "At the same time, I must say that the very fact of it is an important event, maybe a historic event, for the Iraqi people because it is undoubtedly a step toward democratization of the country."

They were wrong in the past, Putin as recently at last month when he declared that elections would be impossible as long as U.S. troops were in Iraq.

(Parenthetically: Last month, UN super-envoy Lakhdar Brahimi declared that elections in Iraq were "impossible" unless the international community stepped in to "help the Iraqis to clean up this mess.")

Perhaps this will lead to Chirac offering to assist in training Iraqi troops, which will serve at least to quiet Joe Biden and his sycophants: McCain, Kerry, Hegel,. et al.

And I'll leave aside the lone military maneuver the French can teach the Iraqis. It is too obvious, and it could be considered a cheap shot.

UPDATE: I've found a little reaction from Germany (and others) in the Morocco Times:

[A] spokesman for German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder described the high turnout a determination of Iraqi people “to take their future into their own hands.”

Which is a tacit vote of confidence in the legitimacy of the elections, but it's not as promising as Chirac's bleat.