US is not a democracy – Putin

The Russian leader has called the political situation in the United States a “catastrophe”

Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that by criticizing democratic processes in other states, all while using their own administrative resources to suppress one of American presidential candidates, Washington has become a laughing stock of the rest of the world.

Speaking to the journalists at his campaign headquarters in Moscow on early Monday morning, after the preliminary results indicated his victory with over 87% of the vote in the country’s presidential elections, the Russian leader said that the "whole world is laughing at what is happening” in the US.

“We are behaving with more restraint than their opponents in other countries, but this is just a catastrophe, not a democracy – that’s what it is,” Putin said.

Putin noted that the US administration is using all its power and resources to attack one of the presidential candidates, apparently referring to former president Donald Trump, who is facing a litany of lawsuits despite being the frontrunner and virtually the only remaining Republican hopeful.

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In a pre-election interview earlier this week Vladimir Putin said that Russia does not meddle in foreign elections and will work with any elected US president.

“I think it’s obvious to everyone that the American political system cannot claim to be democratic in any sense of the word,” he said in an interview with journalist Dmitry Kiselyov. Putin refused to comment further on the current presidential campaign in the US, but described the atmosphere as becoming “increasingly uncivilized.”