Russia’s top lawmaker said Thursday he is considering sending election advice to the United States following the storming of the U.S. Capitol by supporters of outgoing President Donald Trump who dispute his loss.
Vyacheslav Volodin, speaker of the lower house of parliament, was among numerous Russian politicians who called the U.S. electoral system “archaic” and pointed to the Jan. 6 riot on Capitol Hill as a sign of America’s decline.
“When we talk about elections in other countries, it would be right to analyze and summarize the experience and then perhaps send some proposals to our colleagues in the U.S.,” Volodin said.
“We’ll send recommendations,” Volodin said in an interview with state media quoted by the government newspaper Rossiiskaya Gazeta.
A short readout from the interview on the lower-house State Duma’s website quoted him as saying that the U.S. “could learn a thing or two from Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan” and invite international observers. The two post-Soviet Central Asian nations with long track records of rigged elections held their own presidential and parliamentary votes the Sunday following the Capitol siege.
Volodin also advised Washington: “Don’t interfere in the affairs of sovereign states, deal with your problems, and we’ll deal with our own.”
Russia has accused the U.S. of meddling in its politics following regime changes in neighboring Georgia and Ukraine in the early 2000s. Authorities have, over the past few years, moved to crack down on civil society, think tanks and media that Moscow views as “foreign agents.”
The U.S. accused Russia of interfering in the 2016 vote to get Trump elected, a claim rejected by the Kremlin.