Critics of Russian President Vladimir Putin are dismayed that Americans continue to focus on how Russia meddled in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
“The Kremlin is of course very proud of this whole Russian interference story. It shows they are not just a group of old K.G.B. guys with no understanding of digital but an almighty force from a James Bond saga,” Leonid Volkov, chief of staff for the anti-corruption campaigner and opposition leader Aleksei Navalny, told The New York Times. “This image is very bad for us. Putin is not a master geopolitical genius.”
While Volkov and other Russians say that it is clear Russia interfered in the U.S. election, Americans inflate the impact such interference had on the outcome.
“American liberals are so upset about Trump that they cannot believe he is a real product of American life,” said Ivan Kurilla, a professor of history and an America specialist at the European University at St. Petersburg. “They try to portray him as something created by Russia. This whole thing is about America, not Russia.”
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