With US police brutality on spotlight, Putin speaks of ‘deep-seated crises’ America faces
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin says the anti-racism protest movement in the United States speaks of major domestic crises in America.
“What has happened is a sign of some deep-seated internal crises,” the Russian leader said on Sunday as he was giving an interview to Rossiya 1 television, commenting about the recent riots in the United States.
His first interview since the outbreak of the novel coronavirus pandemic was broadcast in full by the Russian television channel on Sunday.
Putin further linked the unrest in the United States to the pandemic, saying these events have put “a spotlight on general problems.”
The President said Russia is “exiting the coronavirus situation steadily with minimal losses,” but the same thing is not happening in the United States.
The key problem in the United States, he said, is a lack of strong leadership.
“I think the problem is that group interests, party interests are put higher than the interests of the whole of society and the interests of the people.”
Putin said Russia never supports mayhem.
“If this fight for natural rights, legal rights, turns into mayhem and rioting, I see nothing good for the country. We have never supported this.”
On May 25, another African American fell victim to police brutality.
George Floyd, unarmed, died after a white officer had knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes in Minneapolis.
It is “a long-standing problem of the United States,” Putin said of violence practiced by law-enforcement officials in America.
“We always in the USSR and in modern Russia had a lot of sympathy for the struggle of Afro-Americans for their natural rights.”
“When – even after crimes are committed – this takes on elements of radical nationalism and extremism, nothing good will come of this.”
Floyd’s death has reignited long-felt anger over police killings of African Americans and unleashed a nationwide wave of civil unrest unlike any seen in the United States since Martin Luther King Jr’s 1968 assassination.
The protest movement now poses a buffeting challenge to President Donald Trump. The US President has called on the states to employ crackdown measures. He has warned he could even use the military if need be.
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