Vladimir Putin

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Putin Says Hackers Could Have Framed Russia

June 3, 2017 at 8:14 am EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Russian President Vladimir Putin told NBC News that hackers who interfered with U.S. elections could have come from “anywhere.”

Said Putin: “Hackers can be anywhere. They can be in Russia, in Asia…even in America, Latin America. They can even be hackers, by the way, in the United States who very skillfully and professionally shifted the blame, as we say, onto Russia. Can you imagine something like that? In the midst of a political battle?”

He added: “By some calculations it was convenient for them to release this information, so they released it, citing Russia. Could you imagine something like that? I can.”

Putin Hints at Russian Role in Hacking U.S. Election

June 1, 2017 at 10:22 am EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Shifting away from his previous blanket denials of Russian involvement in cyberattacks last year to help the presidential campaign of Donald Trump, Russian President Vladimir Putin denied any state role on Thursday but said that “patriotically minded” private Russian hackers could have been involved, the New York Times reports.

Said Putin: “If they are patriotically minded, they start making their contributions — which are right, from their point of view — to the fight against those who say bad things about Russia.”

Putin Denies Meddling in U.S. Election

May 30, 2017 at 4:28 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin says the allegations of Russian meddling in the U.S. presidential election are “fiction” invented by the Democrats in order to explain their loss, the AP reports.

Said Putin: “People who lost the vote hate to acknowledge that they indeed lost because the person who won was closer to the people and had a better understanding of what people wanted.”

Trump made a similar claim in a tweet earlier today.

Putin Offers to Hand Over Records of Meeting

May 17, 2017 at 8:11 am EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Russian President Vladimir Putin said he “would be willing to provide the U.S. Congress a record of President Trump’s meeting with top Russian envoys, possibly offering new details on the disclosures of reportly highly classified intelligence information,” the Washington Post reports.

“The remarkable offer for the Kremlin to share evidence with U.S. oversight committees came with the caveat that the request for the transcript would have to come from the Trump administration.”

Putin also said that “political schizophrenia” had gripped the United States.

Putin May Get Tired of Winning

May 11, 2017 at 9:19 am EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Rick Klein: “The images speak louder than the angry words exchanged inside the Trump White House. Among U.S. officials, the wake of James Comey’s firing has brought accusations, recriminations and even threats of resignations. On the Russian side, the Russian foreign minister and ambassador to the United States were all smiles and laughs in the Oval Office, in pictures with President Trump that were released by the Russians. Back home, Vladimir Putin bemusedly answered questions about U.S. political turmoil, while in full hockey gear (he scored seven goals in the charity event).”

“The big picture here – what this was all about from the start – is the Russians and their attempts to influence U.S. politics. Could they possibly have succeeded more fully? Every day brings more dividends, and new reminders of the true stakes in these extraordinary times. Trump finds himself at war with his own agencies and own Congress, in something close to a constitutional crisis. Putin finds himself scoring, again and again.”

The Putin Interviews

May 1, 2017 at 1:00 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Filmmaker Oliver Stone “has scored the interview so many journalists have been seeking: a sit-down with Russian president Vladimir Putin,” CNN reports.

“The premium cable channel Showtime has secured the television rights to Stone’s finished product, a four-hour documentary called The Putin Interviews.”

Putin Says Claims of Interference Are ‘Lies’

March 30, 2017 at 8:59 am EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Vladimir Putin said that accusations that Russia interfered in last year’s U.S. elections are “lies” used for “domestic American politics,” CNBC reports.

Said Putin: “We said on numerous occasions and I reiterate that we are confident… and know for sure that opinion polls in the United States show that very many people are… friendly towards the Russian Federation, and I’d like to tell these people that we perceive and regard the United States as a great power with which we want to establish good partnership relations.”

He added: “All those things are fictional, illusory and provocations, lies. All these are used for domestic American political agendas. The anti-Russian card is played by different political forces inside the United States to trade on that and consolidate their positions inside.”

Trump Claimed to Have Met Putin 9 Times

March 21, 2017 at 2:09 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

CNN: “Since 2013 — when Trump’s Miss Universe pageant was held in Moscow — Trump has at least nine times claimed to have spoken to, met, or made contact with Putin. But as the 2016 campaign wore on and his statements on Putin began to attract more scrutiny, Trump changed course, denying having ever met the Russian president.”

Why Trump Will Lose Playing Putin’s Dangerous Game

March 3, 2017 at 8:42 am EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Garry Kasparov, the Russian political activist and chess grandmaster, joins us on Political Wire Conversations for a discussion about Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and their very dangerous game.

Subscribe via iTunes or Google Play to get new episodes automatically downloaded to your phone.

Follow the host of our podcast, Chris Riback, on Twitter @chrisriback.

Explaining Trump’s Relationship with Putin

February 20, 2017 at 8:35 am EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

“It’s a bit weird. You’ve been objectively nicer to Vladimir Putin than you have to Meryl Streep.”

Exchange of the Day

February 4, 2017 at 10:09 pm EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

President Trump gave an interview to Bill O’Reilly of Fox News in which he commented on Russian president Vladimir Putin:

TRUMP: “I do respect him, but I respect a lot of people. That doesn’t mean I’m going to get along with him.”

O’REILLY: “But, he is a killer.”

TRUMP: “There are a lot of killers. We’ve got a lot of killers. What do you think? Our country’s so innocent?”

The interview will air just before the Super Bowl.

Putin Doesn’t Believe Trump Met with Prostitutes

January 17, 2017 at 10:28 am EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Russian President Vladimir Putin said he doesn’t believe that President-elect Donald Trump met with prostitutes in Russia, calling the accusations part of a campaign to undermine the election result, Bloomberg reports.

“Putin said that Trump wasn’t a politician when he visited Moscow in the past and Russian officials weren’t aware that he held any political ambitions. It’s ‘complete nonsense’ to believe that Russian security services ‘chase after every American billionaire.'”

Trump Sees Possible Deal with Putin

January 15, 2017 at 8:10 pm EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

President-elect Donald Trump told the Times of London that he was open to working with Russian President Vladimir Putin on a nuclear reduction deal to ease American sanctions.

Politico: “Although Trump’s team Sunday denied a separate Times of London report that his first foreign visit was to be a summit with Putin in Reykjavik, Trump himself revealed an openness to easing sanctions on Russia that the U.S. and NATO allies have imposed in response to Russia’s annexation of territory in Ukraine and Crimea.”

Obama Says He Didn’t Underestimate Putin

January 8, 2017 at 9:11 am EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

President Obama “denied that he underestimated Russian leader Vladimir Putin in 2012 when he mocked GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney for saying Russia was the country’s major enemy in the world,” Politico reports.

Said Obama: “I don’t think I underestimated him. But I think that I underestimated the degree to which, in this new information age, it is possible for misinformation for cyber hacking and so forth to have an impact on our open societies, our open systems, to insinuate themselves into our democratic practices in ways that I think are accelerating.”

Bonus Quote of the Day

December 23, 2016 at 11:27 am EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

“Democrats are losing on every front and looking for people to blame everywhere. They need to learn to lose with dignity. Trump understood the mood of the people and kept going until the end, when nobody believed in him. Except for you and me.”

— Russian President Vladimir Putin, quoted by the Washington Post during his year-end press conference.

Putin Personally Directed Election Hacks

December 15, 2016 at 7:39 am EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

NBC News: “Two senior officials with direct access to the information say new intelligence shows that Putin personally directed how hacked material from Democrats was leaked and otherwise used. The intelligence came from diplomatic sources and spies working for U.S. allies… What began as a ‘vendetta’ against Hillary Clinton morphed into an effort to show corruption in American politics and to ‘split off key American allies by creating the image that [other countries] couldn’t depend on the U.S. to be a credible global leader anymore.'”

Quote of the Day

December 4, 2016 at 9:20 am EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

“Trump was an entrepreneur and a businessman. He is already a statesman, he is the head of the United States of America, one of the world’s leading countries. Because he achieved success in business, it suggests that he is a clever man. And if he is a clever man, then he will fully and quite quickly understand another level of responsibility.”

— Russian President Vladimir Putin, quoted by Reuters.

Trump Has Spoken to Putin More Than Any Other Leader

November 25, 2016 at 9:07 am EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

“In the scarcely two weeks since Donald Trump’s surprise victory over Hillary Clinton, he and Russian President Vladimir Putin have spoken at least twice by phone,” McClatchy reports.

“Their aides have had additional contacts.”

“That’s more contact than Trump is known to have had with any other world leader since he defeated Clinton in the Nov. 8 election. But it is a concrete display of what many predicted would be a reversal in the standoffish relations between the two nuclear powers should Trump win election.”