MOSCOW (Reuters) -The Kremlin said on Wednesday that it really did not like the way Vladimir Putin’s name was bandied around in the U.S. presidential debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump and urged them to stop dragging him into their political fight.
President Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov was speaking a week after the Kremlin leader said in a teasing remark that he favoured Harris over Trump, prompting the White House to say that Putin should stop commenting on the upcoming November election.
Peskov told reporters that the Kremlin had not directly followed Tuesday night’s debate, but had tracked news reports of it.
“Of course, we noticed that both candidates mentioned our president, mentioned our country. Of course, the position is quite clear – the U.S. as a whole, no matter which party the candidates are from, maintains a negative attitude, an unfriendly attitude towards our country,” he said.
“Putin’s name is used as one of the instruments in the domestic political struggle in the U.S. We really, really don’t like it, and we hope that they will leave our president’s name alone.”
(Reporting by Dmitry Antonov; Writing by Anastasia Teterevleva and Mark TrevelyanEditing by Andrew Osborn)
