Russian President Vladimir Putin appeared rattled by a Black American woman reporter after she asked him why he is jailing and murdering political opponents. Ultimately Putin equated the Black Lives Matter movement – created to protest police killings of mostly unarmed Black men – with the January 6 insurrection, and telling her he would “prevent” the Black Lives Matter movement were it to come to Russia.
“The list of your political opponents who are dead, imprisoned or jailed is long,” ABC News’ Rachel Scott told the Russian President and former KGB official, “and you have now prevented anyone who supports [Alexey Navalny] to run for office.”
“So my question is, Mr. President: what are you so afraid of?”
After Putin rambled for a few minutes, he brought up Black Lives Matter.
“America, quite recently, had to deal with terrible events after the murder of, the killing of the African American, and Black Lives Matter ensued,” Putin said. “I don’t want to make any judgment about that but what we saw, mass violations of the law and so on so forth. We sympathize with the Americans but we do not wish that this kind of thing could happen on our territory and we will do our utmost to prevent tension,” he said, referring to BLM.
He concluded by saying he didn’t even want to address the “afraid of” part, calling it, “irrelevant.”
“So you didn’t answer my question sir, if all of your political opponents are dead, in prison, poisoned, doesn’t that send a message that you do not want a fair political fight?” Scott replied.
Putin then falsely claimed the thousands of people who attacked the U.S. Capitol in an attempted coup on January 6 were merely Americans with “political demands,” which is false.
“We sympathize with what’s happening in the States, but we do not wish that to happen in Russia,” Putin concluded, equating the BLM movement with the January 6 insurrection, two extremely different and unrelated events.
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