WASHINGTON (AP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin faulted his imprisoned political rival for leaving Russia without legal permission, omitting the vital detail that the departure was, literally, an unconscious decision: Alexei Navalny was in a coma.
After meeting President Joe Biden in Geneva, Putin also weighed in on U.S. affairs in distorted ways as he tried to equate the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol with his political opposition at home and argued against the evidence that the United States is a more pernicious source of cyberattacks than his country.
Biden overstated the tribulations of his stateside political opponents. Republicans are not a “vastly diminished” party, as he contended in trying to assure the Group of Seven major industrial nations and NATO allies that his policies won’t be shredded by the next election.
A look at the veracity of some statements from Biden’s week of diplomacy and his return to the domestic fray:
POLITICS
BIDEN: “I think it’s appropriate to say that the Republican Party is vastly diminished in numbers.” — news conference Monday, when asked how he reassures allies that the U.S. will be a reliable partner in future years given former President Donald Trump’s enduring influence over the GOP.
THE FACTS: No, the Republican Party hasn’t withered. Everywhere you look — the Senate, the House, governor’s offices, statehouses, the 2020 election results — it’s potent.
Biden correctly pointed out fractures in the GOP leadership and ranks brought on by Trump’s refusal to concede his presidential election defeat and his stoking of the mob that stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6. Biden’s observation that “the Trump wing of the party is the bulk of the party” also may be true in terms of who exerts the most influence at the moment.
But the GOP is far from a spent force.
Gallup polling, for example, finds that 29% of Americans surveyed last month identified as Republican compared with 33% who said Democratic. That share is basically unchanged from a year ago.
Republicans in November narrowed Democrats’ margin in the House to single digits by flipping 15 seats while winning in each of the races that had a GOP incumbent. Republicans doubled their low number of women in the House to 31, a record for the party, according to the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University, and added new ethnic minority lawmakers as well.
The Senate is evenly divided at 50-50. Republican governors lead in 27 states, Democrats in 23. In November, 74 million people voted for Trump, 81 million for Biden. Both vote counts were a record.
Elections for the House and numerous Senate seats will be held in November 2022.
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RUSSIA
PUTIN, defending Navalny’s imprisonment: “This person knew that he was breaching the laws effective in Russia. … Consciously, I want to underline this, ignoring the demand of the law, this gentleman went abroad for treatment. … He didn’t register with the authorities. … He knew that he was then being investigated and he came back deliberately.” — Geneva news conference.
THE FACTS: He left the country in a coma; he did not leave Russia by choice.
Navalny was taken into custody Jan. 17 when he returned to Russia from five months in Germany where he was recovering from nerve-agent poisoning that he blames on the Kremlin.
Navalny fell severely ill on a domestic flight in August and was taken to a Siberian hospital in a coma. Two days later, after resistance from doctors, he was flown to Germany for treatment, still in a coma. Putin, however, implied that Navalny had made a conscious decision to leave the country, “ignoring the demand of the law” as he “went abroad the treatment.”
Authorities later determined that Navalny’s time abroad violated terms of a suspended sentence he had been handed in an embezzlement case that he says was politically motivated.
Nonetheless, he returned to Russia, knowing he faced potential prison time. Navalny is now serving 2½ years in prison for violating his suspended sentence terms.
After Putin’s comments, Navalny’s wife, Yulia Navalnaya, posted on Instagram a photo of a covered human form on a gurney outside an airplane. “I kept a photograph of how Alexei, deliberately ignoring the requirement to be registered at the inspection, ‘went abroad for treatment,’” she wrote, mocking Putin’s words.