It will come as no surprise to anyone that today Vladimir Putin defended his BFF Donald Trump at a news conference in Moscow. Demonstrating a bizarre tone-deafness to the current allegations, he accused those who are spreading them of “acting like prostitutes.” He also affirmed how much he and the president-elect have in common when it comes to objectifying women.
Putin also sarcastically suggested that Trump, who met the world’s most beautiful women at the pageant, had a better choice for female companionship than Moscow prostitutes, even though Putin claimed “they are also the best in the world.”
But the most fascinating thing he said was this:
He said Trump’s foes are ready to go as far as to “stage a Maidan in Washington to prevent Trump from entering office”…
It’s clear that Putin was actually talking about the protests we now refer to as Euromaidan, which led to the 2014 Ukrainian revolution.
The demonstrations that shook Ukraine throughout November and December 2013 reached a critical turning point on December 17th, when the country’s embattled president, Viktor Yanukovych, struck a surprise deal with Vladimir Putin in which Russia bought $15 billion in Ukrainian bonds and slashed the price on natural gas by a third. This news flash came as blunt confirmation that Yanukovych had no intention of giving in to the innovative protest movement that had put his government in crisis by demanding that the country look west toward Europe instead of becoming a Russian ally once more. As the protesters digested what seemed to be a significant coup by Putin, the question of what would come next hung in the air. But by New Year’s Eve, hundreds of thousands of demonstrators were in the streets again, stronger than ever.
The Russian president is basically equating Trump with another corrupt Putin puppet, Yanukovych. Perhaps he is so blinded by his own bias that he thinks that is a helpful way to defend Trump. But he just confirmed every suspicion many of us have harbored about the president-elect.
