The Russian President Vladimir Putin blasted both Donald Trump’s and Hillary Clinton’s tactics on the campaign trail saying“They’re both using shock tactics, just each in their own way,” the Russian president said in an interview. “I don’t think they are setting the best example,” he added.
In the interview, Putin denounced what he called playing “the anti-Russian card” by the candidates as “shortsighted.” He denied that his government was involved in hacking, sarcastically dismissing the DNC revelations as uninteresting, but said the breaches could be impossible to trace.
Speaking for two hours in the Pacific port city of Vladivostok on the eve of an economic forum and meetings of leaders from the Group of 20, Putin covered topics from the chance for a deal with other oil producers to boost prices, to Russian privatization plansand hopes for a breakthrough on closer ties with Japan.
Facing criticism from U.S. and other foreign leaders that his Kremlin-centered political system is authoritarian, Putin has repeatedly tarred the U.S. electoral process as undemocratic. In June, he cited as an example the fact that candidates have won the presidency even though they lost the popular vote.
Russian political campaigns have become relatively staid affairs since Putin came to power in 2000. In his last run, in 2012, he declined to debate his opponents, at least one of whom had said just days before he announced his own bid that he thought Putin was actually the best candidate. Even with the country mired in the longest recession in two decades, Putin’s ruling party is expected to win a majority of seats in parliamentary elections on Sep. 18
Beyond bemoaning the candidates’ use of Russia in their attacks, Putin didn’t spell out what campaign tactics in the U.S. he found distasteful. At one point, he described the candidates as “very smart people” who “understand which buttons you need to press” to win support. The resulting attacks, he said, are part of “the U.S. political culture.”
Under the Russian president, who has been in power under three different occupants of the White House, ties have steadily worsened with the U.S.
In the interview, he accused past administrations — which he didn’t name — of quietly assuring the Kremlin that relations would ultimately improve despite campaigns in which anti-Russian rhetoric ran high. “All this should be more dignified,” he said.
