The setting was an economic conference in far eastern Russia, with discussion of the ruble and domestic investment, but that didn’t stop President Vladimir Putin from wading into American politics, branding the criminal cases against Donald Trump political persecution and praising billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk.
For years, the Russian leader has demonstrated an ability to exploit political divisions within Western nations, often by signalling to conservatives abroad that he is aligned with them in a global fight against liberal values.
Putin’s remarks on Tuesday (Wednesday NZT), made at the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, appeared aimed at lending firepower to the Republican outcry over the prosecutions of Trump, who has long expressed public admiration for the Russian leader and has helped encourage a sizable Moscow-friendly contingent within his party.
The cases against Trump — who faces 91 felony counts in four jurisdictions — represent the “persecution of one’s political rival for political motives”, Putin said. He predicted that the entire affair would help Russia by exposing US domestic problems for the world to see and revealing the hypocrisy of American democracy.
“Given today’s conditions, what is happening is good for us, in my opinion, because it shows the rottenness of the American political system, which cannot pretend to teach democracy to others,” Putin said, prompting the hall to erupt in applause.
Putin, whose political adversaries have a way of ending up in prison or worse, said the criminal cases against Trump also demonstrated who Russia is really fighting against as it prosecutes its invasion of Ukraine. “As they said back in Soviet times, ‘the bestial visage of American imperialism, the bestial grin’,” he said.
Trump offered no public response to Putin’s remarks, and his aides did not respond to requests for comment.
Unlike in the past, Putin expressed a measure of resignation about the American posture toward Russia, saying the United States would likely remain anti-Russian, even if Trump were to return to the White House.
“Though they accused him of special ties to Russia, it was complete nonsense, total bull****, and he more than anything imposed sanctions on Russia,” Putin said. “So what to expect in the future, regardless of who is president, is difficult to say. But it’s unlikely anything will change definitively, because the current government has configured American society in such an anti-Russian manner and spirit.”
In the United States, where Republicans are competing for their party’s presidential nomination — with Trump considered to be far ahead — several leading GOP figures rejected Putin’s criticism.
“America’s founding principles will always stand the test of time, and Vladimir Putin’s opinion of our constitutional republic holds no value in the United States,” former Vice President Mike Pence said in a statement. “Putin should be more concerned about how quickly his military went from being the second most powerful in the world to the second most powerful in Ukraine.”
Senator Lindsey Graham, who is a strong supporter of both Trump and of American aid to Ukraine, said in an interview that the prosecutions taking place against Trump were “part of democracy”. He said that some parts of the American system were being “run off the rails”, but that the people in charge would have to answer to voters.
“No one in Russia is able to speak against Putin,” Graham said, “because he’ll kill them.”
Former Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey, who is running against Trump for the nomination, said Putin’s comments were in effect a vote of support for his opponent. “It’s good to see Vladimir Putin has made his endorsement official — and no surprise, he’s endorsed another autocrat,” Christie said.
Putin’s comments amounted to the latest chapter in a political drama that began when Russia interfered in the 2016 US presidential election, spreading disinformation online and hacking and releasing emails from the Democratic National Committee and the campaign manager of Trump’s Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton.
The controversy over Trump’s seeming sympathies for the Kremlin continued well after he took office in early 2017. Throughout his term, Trump heaped praise on Putin, and at one point, during a 2018 summit in Helsinki, professed to trust the Russian leader more than his own intelligence services.
Even after he was defeated for reelection, Trump clung to that stance. In January, in a post on his Truth Social website, he again suggested that he had been right to trust the Russian president more than US intelligence and FBI “lowlifes”.
Trump’s assertions at the Helsinki meeting — where, in an unusual breach of protocol, he met with Putin without any aides present — were roundly criticised by his opponents as unseemly pandering to the Russian leader.
Still, even as Trump expressed sympathy with Moscow from the White House, he packed his administration with officials who were hawkish on Russia and, in tandem with lawmakers in Congress, continued to promote a foreign policy that punished Moscow for the 2016 interference, pushed through sanctions, and labelled Russia a “great power” competitor.
At his economic forum on Tuesday, Putin also offered praise for Musk, calling him a “talented businessman” when asked about the possibility of private space companies similar to Musk’s SpaceX arising in Russia.
“When it comes to private business, Elon Musk, he is, without a doubt, an outstanding person, one has to admit,” Putin said. “But I think everyone would admit that all around the world. He is an active, talented businessman. A lot works out for him, including with the support of the American government.”
That description was reminiscent of the way the Russian leader once described Trump — “brilliant and talented” — in the early days of the New York real estate mogul’s first presidential campaign.
Musk is a self-proclaimed free speech absolutist, and his purchase of Twitter, recently rebranded to X, has led to a rise in the sort of misinformation and bot activity on a platform that Russia has turned to often to achieve its geopolitical aims.
The billionaire has also involved himself directly in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, at one point proposing a peace solution on Twitter that drew condemnation for echoing Kremlin talking points.
And last week, Musk attracted renewed scrutiny when a new biography asserted that he had thwarted an attack on Russia’s Black Sea naval fleet in 2022 by refusing to let the Ukrainian military use his satellite network, Starlink, to guide its drones. He said he had disabled Starlink in Crimea long before the Ukrainian attack was planned, and had declined a request to enable it to avoid being complicit in what he said would be a “major act of war”.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Written by: Paul Sonne and Michael C. Bender
Photographs by: Doug Mills and AP
©2023 THE NEW YORK TIMES
