MOSCOW (Reuters) – The Kremlin said on Wednesday it really didn’t like the way Vladimir Putin’s name was buried in the U.S. presidential debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, urging them to stop dragging him into the political fray.
President Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov spoke a week after the Kremlin leader said in a teasing remark that he favored Harris over Trump, prompting the White House to say Putin should stop commenting on the upcoming November election.
Peskov told reporters that the Kremlin had not directly followed Tuesday night’s discussion, but had followed news reports about it.
“Of course, we noticed that both candidates mentioned our president, we mentioned our country. Of course, the position is quite clear – the USA as a whole, regardless of which party the candidates are from, has a negative attitude, an unfriendly attitude towards our country,” he said.
“Putin’s name is being used as a tool in the internal political struggle in the United States. We really don’t like that, and we hope they leave our president’s name alone.”
(Reporting by Dmitri Antonov; Writing by Anastasia Teterevleva and Mark Trevelyan Editing by Andrew Osborn)
