MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russian President Vladimir Putin batted away a question about his crackdown on political rivals on Wednesday by changing the subject to what he said was disorder in the United States around the storming of the U.S. Capitol and Black Lives Matter.
Putin, speaking after a summit with U.S. President Joe Biden in Geneva, said he did not want to see riots in Russia or a movement akin to Black Lives Matter movement.
“America just recently had very severe events, well known events after the killing of an African American. An entire movement developed, known as Black Lives Matter,” Putin told reporters.
“What we saw was disorder, disruption, violations of the law, etc. We feel sympathy for the United States of America, but we don’t want that to happen on our territory and we’ll do our utmost in order to not allow it to happen,” he said.
(Reporting by Vladimir Soldatkin; Writing by Polina Ivanova; editing by Andrew Osborn)
