Putin joked about Harris’ election support, Kremlin says; Zelenskyy hopes to meet Trump next week
Russian President Vladimir Putin was joking when he said Moscow was backing Democratic candidate Kamala Harris in November’s presidential election, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in an interview with Sky News Arabia.
Putin said earlier this month that Russia wanted Kamala Harris to win the election, in a teasing comment that cited her “infectious” laugh as a reason for choosing her over Republican nominee and former President Donald Trump. The Russian leader’s remark prompted the White House to say Putin should stop commenting on the Nov. 5 election.
“It was a joke,” Lavrov said when asked how the change of U.S. president would affect Russia’s foreign policy. “President Putin has a good sense of humor. He often jokes in his statements and interviews.”
“I do not see any long-term difference in our attitude towards the current or previous elections in the United States, because this country is run by the infamous ‘deep state,'” Lavrov said, without providing evidence to support this claim.
Lavrov’s comments were published on the Foreign Ministry’s website on Friday.
For his part, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he hoped to meet former President Donald Trump next week when he travels to the United States to present kyiv’s “victory plan” in the war against Russia.
Zelenskyy will attend sessions of the UN Security Council and General Assembly and also plans to meet with President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris in separate meetings on September 26.
The Ukrainian leader said he also hoped to meet with Trump, the Republican presidential candidate.
“We will most likely have a meeting, I think, on September 26-27,” Zelensky told media Friday evening, without providing further details.
Zelensky said in August that he wanted to present his plan to Biden, Harris and Trump. Although Trump and Zelensky spoke on the phone in July, they have not met in person since Trump’s 2017-2021 term.
Zelensky described the plan as a model to force Russia to end its war diplomatically and said it depended on swift decisions by key allies between October and December this year.
At a critical moment in the war, Zelensky is seeking to strengthen Ukraine by supplying it with more weapons and by benefiting from the military, economic and diplomatic support of the United States, kyiv’s main ally. He is expected to push Washington to lift restrictions on long-range missile strikes on Russia.
Russian forces continue to advance slowly but steadily in eastern Ukraine despite a surprise incursion by kyiv’s troops last month into Russia’s Kursk region.
Zelensky has repeatedly said there is no alternative to a “just peace” and ruled out freezing the war, saying it would only postpone Russian aggression.
