Putin tells Biden: ‘Don’t be mad at the mirror if you are ugly’, compares Capitol rioters to his own ‘dissent’

Russia’s Vladimir Putin sought to compare crackdowns on his political enemies and the arrests of anti-government protesters in his country to the events of 6 January in an interview published Monday by NBC News.
Speaking with journalists in Moscow, Mr Putin claimed that the US and other countries had no evidence for allegations of election interference, ransomware attacks and other malicious activities for which the west has blamed Russia or Russia-based actors in recent years.
He also pointed to the arrests of hundreds of suspected participants in US Capitol riot on 6 January as evidence that the Biden administration or US was targeting Americans based on their political opinions.
“Did you order the assassination of the woman who walked into the Congress and who was shot and killed by a policeman?” Mr Putin said, referring to Ashli Babbitt, a California woman who died during the riot after being shot by a member of US Capitol Police, who was cleared of wrongdoing in her death.
“Do you know that 450 individuals were arrested after entering the Congress? And they didn’t go there to steal a laptop. They came with political demands,” said Mr Putin. (...)