Last Updated on June 15, 2021
During an interview with NBC News, Russian President Vladimir Putin turned the tables on a left-wing reporter who insinuated that Russia is guilty of human rights abuses by pressing the journalist on the Biden administration’s persecution of political opponents, and the assassination of unarmed election integrity protester Ashli Babbitt.
When the reporter aggressive asked, “Did you order Alexei Navalny’s assassination?” Putin responded, “We don’t have this kind of habit, of assassinating anybody. That’s first. Secondly, I want to ask you, did you order the assassination of the woman who walked into the Congress and who was shot and killed by a policeman?”
“Do you know that 450 individuals were arrested after entering the Congress?” Putin said. “And they didn’t go there to steal a laptop. They came with political demands. 450 people have been detained. They’re facing jail time, from 15 to 25 years. And they came to Congress with political demands. Isn’t that persecution for political opinions?”
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The reporter appeared wholly unable to respond to Putin’s questioning.
Putin went on to negatively contrast President Joe Biden with former President Donald Trump. “Well even now, I believe that former U.S. president Mr Trump is an extraordinary individual, talented individual, otherwise he would not have become U.S. president,” he stated. “He is a colorful individual. You may like him or not. And, but he didn’t come from the U.S. establishment. He had not been part of big-time politics before, and some like it, some don’t like it but that is a fact.”
On Biden Putin said, “He is radically different from Trump because President Biden is a career man. He has spent virtually his entire adulthood in politics. That’s a different kind of person, and it is my great hope that, yes, there are some advantages, some disadvantages, but there will not be any impulse-based movements on behalf of the sitting U.S. president.”
