Fairfield, Ia. – America needs to take careful measures to ensure that Russia does not wind up joining China to form a powerful partnership that could threaten the west, presidential candidate John Edwards said today.
Edwards criticized Russian President Vladimir Putin, saying he has taken the country away from democracy. “Russia is not a democracy, by any possible measure now,” he said. “He’s squashed opposition parties, he controls the media, he rules the country with an iron hand out of the Kremlin. And now it’s clear that his hand-picked successor is going to take his place, and he’s going to continue being the puppeteer, behind the scenes, running the country.”
Edwards was answering a rare voter question about Russian. He made a joking reference to a President Bush declaration that he knew he could work with Putin after looking into his eyes.
“A former KGB agent is not someone you can look in his eyes and see his soul,” he said to laughter.
Edwards said the United States should use economic and political pressure to urge Russia to return to a democratic path. The way it’s going, it is becoming further and further from America on basic values, and growing closer to China, he said.
If that continues, those two American rivals could eventually form a de facto partnership that would threaten the United States and other western democracies. “That would be very unhealthy over the long term to our capacity to be able to solve the world’s problems.”
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