This Friday, the Kremlin repudiated the way in which US President Joe Biden compared Russian leader Vladimir Putin to the Islamic group Hamas, considering it unacceptable.
On Thursday, Biden warned that if the Islamist group Hamas and Putin do not pay for the pain they have caused in Israel and Ukraine, there will be more “chaos” and more “death” in the world.
For the American leader, “Hamas and Putin represent different threats, but they have something in common: they both want to completely annihilate neighboring democracies.”
Biden affirmed that the meaning of the existence of Hamas – considered a terrorist group by the United States, but not by Russia – is to annihilate Israel, while Putin denies Ukraine the right to exist as an independent State.
“We do not consider this tone acceptable in relation to the Russian Federation and its president,” said Russian presidential spokesman Dmitri Peskov, for whom Biden’s rhetoric is not typical of a responsible politician.
Regarding Washington’s statements about the need to contain Russia, the Kremlin spokesman assured that these attempts were and will be unsuccessful.
Dmitri Peskov also denied that Russia is deliberately persecuting American citizens following the arrest of a Russian-American journalist from Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL).
“In Russia there is no campaign that persecutes American citizens,” Peskov assured, although he acknowledged that “there are American citizens who violate the laws and against whom legal measures are taken.”
The Russian-American journalist Alsu Kurmasheva was arrested this Wednesday in Kazan, capital of the Russian republic of Tatarstan, for failing to register as a “foreign agent”, according to RFE/RL, the media outlet for which she works.
The crime with which the journalist, a member of the editorial staff of the Tatar-Bashkir service of this Prague-based station, is accused, is punishable in Russia with a sentence of up to five years in prison.
Kurmasheva’s detention is not the first this year in Russia of journalists with American citizenship.
On March 30, Russia’s Federal Security Service announced the arrest of Wall Street Journal journalist Evan Gershkovich on charges of espionage.
Source: TSF
