US, WASHINGTON (ORDO NEWS) — Russian President Vladimir Putin on Sunday said the United States was plagued by a “deep internal crisis,” and explained the crisis by the reluctance of President Trump’s opponents to recognize his “obvious” victory in 2016, as well as his legitimacy as president.
Giving the first interview after the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, which dealt a powerful blow to Russia three months ago and forced the president to take refuge in his suburban residence, Putin also pointed to racial tensions that put America’s cities on the edge of the abyss.
Russia, and before it the Soviet Union, has always been very sympathetic to the struggle of African Americans for their natural rights, he said. However, Putin added, when protests turn into chaos and pogroms, “I don’t see anything good for the country in this.”
He said that the demolition of statues is “undoubtedly a destructive phenomenon,” and said that protests are sometimes riddled with “radical nationalism and extremism.”
Putin insisted that he wanted to be very careful in his comments on events in the US. However, he is often accused of trying to foment divisions in America, and it appears that he did it again during the interview, criticizing the United States for its anti-coronavirus actions under Trump.
Putin is also sharply criticized for his actions in response to the pandemic.
Since the Russian president’s popularity ratings are at the lowest level in the past 20 years, he really wants to proclaim victory over the coronavirus so that his health concerns would not hinder the holding of military parades postponed for June 24, as well as the referendum scheduled for July 1, which will allow him to stay in power until 2036.
Putin took advantage of this interview to attack Trump’s opponents who accuse the Kremlin of helping him win the 2016 election, although Moscow has repeatedly denied this. US intelligence agencies jointly assessed Russian interference in the election, and in January 2018 concluded that “President Putin ordered a campaign in 2016 to influence the US presidential election.”
According to Putin, America’s long-standing problems with racism have intensified the deepest crisis of legitimacy that “we have been observing for a long time.” Instead of admitting that Trump won the victory “in an absolutely democratic way,” Hillary Clinton supporters come up with all kinds of fables in an attempt to cast doubt on his legitimacy, the Russian leader said.
Putin’s interview was shown on Sunday night on state television after a weekly news review that featured a picture of unremitting chaos in the streets of American cities. Presenter Dmitry Kiselyov said that the United States today resembles the Soviet Union, when it was in the end of 1991 going to collapse.
The idea that the United States has faced a deep crisis that threatens America’s existence and resembles the collapse of the Soviet empire has recently become a popular topic in the Kremlin-controlled media, and especially on television.
“This is their restructuring,” said Vladimir Solovyov, the host of the Sunday evening talk show, recalling the period of chaotic reforms begun by Mikhail Gorbachev in the mid-1980s. He started them in order to revive the Soviet Union, but in the end it all ended with the collapse of the country.
Comparing Russian actions in the fight against a pandemic with American ones, Putin said: “We are confidently with minimal losses in this situation with the coronavirus. It’s not happening in the States.”
Russia, where 9,000 new infections appear daily, ranks third in the world in terms of infection rates after the United States and Brazil. She repeatedly stated that the virus was taken under control, although there is considerable evidence that the epidemic continues to spread rapidly in some areas, and there are many questions about the unusually low mortality from coronavirus. Moscow last week began to abolish self-isolation measures, which were some of the most stringent in the world.
The way Russia deals with the coronavirus, Putin said, proves how important it is to have a “single team” that runs the country, rather than the fragmented system that exists in the US. There, the governors are free to tell the president: “Yes, you go away.” “And narrow party interests are put above the interests of the whole society and the interests of people,” the Russian president said.
—
Online:
Contact us: [email protected]
Our Standards, Terms of Use: Standard Terms And Conditions.