Russian officials lash out at US after State Department publishes list of Putin lies
Pro-Moscow demonstrators with a Russian flag near the Crimean parliament building in Simferopol on Thursday.
The United States can’t handle the truth.
At least according to the Russian response to a State Department top-10 list that compiled President Vladimir Putin’s “false truths” on Ukraine.
After Putin’s press conference about Ukraine on Wednesday, the US State Department released a top-10 list of his "false truths" that many considered tongue-in-cheek.
Russia was not amused.
Foreign Ministry representative Aleksandr Lukashevich issued a haughty retort, accusing the United States of “low-grade propaganda” and an arrogant inability to accept it has no “monopoly on the truth.”
“The State Department is trying to play on a shamelessly one-sided interpretation of the events,” he said on Thursday, according to Russia Today.
Lukashevich also provided a history lesson, citing American interventions in foreign conflicts as proof of American hypocrisy.
More from GlobalPost: State Department channels its inner Letterman with top 10 Putin ‘False Truths’
“What about the bombing of former Yugoslavia or the invasion of Iraq over a fabricated cause? The Vietnam War claimed the lives of two million civilians, not to mention totally destroyed the country and polluted the environment,” Lukashevich said.
He also mentioned Lebanon (1958), the Dominican Republic (1965), “tiny” Grenada (1983), Libya (1986) and Panama (1989) as evidence.
The New York Times noted, "Detailed and grisly descriptions of the United States’ past interventions, nearly every one deeply unpopular with Soviet and Russian people, have become a dominant theme in Russian reporting on Ukraine and its Russian-populated Crimean Peninsula."
A former Russian diplomat and Putin ally went a step further during an interview with the Financial Times, saying the United States was trying to destroy Russia.
Vladimir Yakunin, now president of Russian Railways, claimed the United States always wanted to drive a wedge between Kyiv and Moscow.
He accused the West of bringing former Warsaw Pact nations into NATO or the European Union to dismantle Russia.
“We are witnessing a huge geopolitical game in which the aim is the destruction of Russia as a geopolitical opponent of the US or of this global financial oligarchy,” Yakunin told the FT.
More from GlobalPost: 2014 Nobel Peace Prize nominees include Snowden, Malala, Pope Francis … and Putin?
The story you just read is accessible and free to all because thousands of listeners and readers contribute to our nonprofit newsroom. We go deep to bring you the human-centered international reporting that you know you can trust. To do this work and to do it well, we rely on the support of our listeners. If you appreciated our coverage this year, if there was a story that made you pause or a song that moved you, would you consider making a gift to sustain our work through 2024 and beyond?