During Tuesday night’s debate between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s name was thrown around often.
While facing off against one another, the Ukraine war was brought up frequently, as Harris claimed that Trump would give the Ukraine to Putin. At one point, she said that if he had been president, Putin would be sitting in Kyiv right now.
Trump disagreed with Harris, saying that if he had been president, Putin would not have even thought about overstepping and invading Ukraine.
No matter how he was brought up, Putin’s chief spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, said on Wednesday that he was mentioned far too much by the candidates.
“The name Putin is used, let’s say, as one of the tools in the domestic political struggle of the United States,” Peskov told reporters in Moscow. “We really, really don’t like this, and we still hope they will leave our president alone.”
While Peskov seemed to remain rather neutral in his response, not targeting one candidate over the other, Putin has offered remarks that could be considered an endorsement for Harris, CBS News reported. Whether he did that to subjugate talk about his alleged ties to Trump is anyone's guess.
However, Putin also recently said the position was “quite clear: The US as a whole, no matter which party the candidates are from, maintains a negative attitude, an unfriendly attitude towards our country.”
Russia has spent more than two years in Ukraine in what it’s called a “special military operation.”
While Trump has not made clear what he would do in Ukraine should he be reelected, he said that the fighting would be over before he is sworn in.
No matter what happens, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said that Putin winning in Ukraine would only be the start, as he would then look to the rest of Europe and the US’s allies.