Russia's Putin says U.S. supports opposition protesters
Source: Reuters
(Reuters) - President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday accused U.S. diplomats of interfering in Russian politics by supporting opposition demonstrators, a day before a planned protest march in Moscow.
Putin's complaint came in remarks in which he criticized U.S. actions ranging from the treatment of Native Americans to the dropping of the atom bomb on Hiroshima, but said Russia and the United States had common interests and should cooperate.
"Our diplomatic service does not cooperate actively with Occupy Wall Street, but your diplomatic service interacts actively with (Russian opposition figures) and directly supports them," Putin said, referring to the United States.
"This is not right, because diplomatic services should be building relations between states and not getting involved in their internal political affairs," he told Russia's English-language state channel RT.
Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/11/us-russia-usa-idUSBRE95A14520130611?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews&rpc=71&google_editors_picks=true
Laelth
(32,017 posts)That's a pretty serious accusation.
Did Obama know? Or are our spooks out of control? Either way, this is not good for the President.
-Laelth
kyeshinka
(44 posts)The US government supporting protesters? That's the nicest thing anyone has said about us in quite a while. Usually we're the ones supplying weapons and pepper spray to dictatorships/faux democracies/Oakland PD to be used on grandmothers and six-year-olds.
David__77
(23,553 posts)I mean that seriously. Start writing checks and creating left-wing media, etc. The US wouldn't like that at all.
joshcryer
(62,277 posts)He wouldn't want to come off as a "gay lover" would he?
I suppose United Russia will cheer on his feeding money to left groups too.
Let's be honest, David. The right wingers in Russia have been using homosexuality as a crutch for years now, much like how the right wing used homosexuality, welfare, and abortions in the US.
It's total psyops in Russia and the Russian people fucking fell for it.
Except for independent minded Russian protesters who Putin has now decided are being funded by the US much like Latin American populists blame the US for their problems. This is entirely internal, and I'm glad you appear to agree with me on that count.
David__77
(23,553 posts)I don't mean pro-gay ones. Note that the Russian Left is anti-gay, just as is the Russian Right, albeit for slightly different reasons. The former is based on reflexive revulsion, like the Stalin-loving Archie Bunker analogue lot of those in Russia. The latter is based on conviction regarding "natural law" and other nonsense of the sort.
Putin is not a leftist - he's right-wing "national conservative" with Bolshevist coloring at times, to enhance his position. But he would support nominally "Leftist" groups in the West, because those would be the forces that would tend to cause trouble for the Western authorities, and in particular oppose geostrategic aggregression eastward.
And, by the way, I would hope that Putin would NOT do this, as I don't want Russia to interfere in US internal affairs. But I can see how it would happen, as a response to the various NGOs' activity in Russia. It's stupid for Putin to claim that his opposition is Western-funded. Few forces are feeding off that trough. The KPRF certainly gets nothing, and they're the main opposition party.
joshcryer
(62,277 posts)Fed in large part by United Russia and Putin's right wing policies. I can't say with a great detail how much of the "left" in Russia is anti-gay, but I do know that the protesters themselves are pro-liberty and not anti-gay.