A prior post reported that a Russian expert, Jill Doherty, asserted that Russia’s President, Vladimir Putin, hated Hillary Clinton because of a belief that she was behind demonstrations against Russia’s 2011 parliamentary elections.
Now an article by the Washington Post’s Joby Warrick and Karen DeYoung provides more details and insights regarding this conflict between the two leaders.[1]
They say that Russia’s December 2011 parliamentary elections were described as “fraudulent” by independent monitoring groups when “thousands of Russians took to the streets in protest.” Clinton as Secretary of State “with the White House’s explicit blessing — spoke publicly in . . . [the protesters’] defense, condemning Russian officials for manipulating the vote and systematically harassing election observers.” She said, “The Russian people, like people everywhere, deserve the right to have their voices heard and their votes counted. And that means they deserve fair, free, transparent elections and leaders who are accountable to them.”
In response Putin “suggested that his political opponents were following marching orders from Clinton and her team. . . . Kremlin officials repeated the charge in private meetings with U.S. diplomats, expressing a vehemence that surprised some Obama administration officials.”
Indeed, Clifford Kupchan, chairman of the consulting firm Eurasia Group and a Russia expert who attended private meetings with Putin during the Clinton years, observed, “Putin has kind of got it in for Hillary. [Her] . . . statements after the [parliamentary election] riots were like kerosene on a fire, and it really made Putin angry.”
It, therefore, is not surprising that in her last month as Secretary of State in January 2013, Clinton sent a confidential memo about Putin to the White House. “Don’t appear too eager to work together. Don’t flatter Putin with high-level attention. Decline his invitation for a presidential summit.” Her conclusion: “strength and resolve were the only language Putin would understand.”
It also is not surprising in this year’s U.S. presidential election, according to some experts, “that Putin might support clandestine efforts to undermine her [presidential] candidacy — regardless of his views of her chief political opponent [Donald Trump].” (Emphasis added.)
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[1] Warrick & DeYoung, From ‘reset’ to ‘pause’: The real story behind Hillary Clinton and Vladimir Putin, Wash. Post (Nov. 3, 2016).
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