MOSCOW — Besieged in Washington, President Trump found an eager friend in Moscow on Thursday.
At his annual end-of-year news conference, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia parroted Mr. Trump’s talking points, mocking Wednesday’s impeachment vote as a partisan effort by Democrats to reverse their defeat in the 2016 presidential election.
He also took up Mr. Trump’s argument that there was no solid evidence to justify his removal from office. Offering an analysis of American political dynamics, Mr. Putin said that Mr. Trump was unlikely to be removed for “highly speculative reasons” by the Republican-controlled Senate.
“This is nothing but a continuation of an internal political struggle, with the party that lost the election, the Democratic Party, trying to reach its goal by different means,” Mr. Putin said during the 15th edition of a news conference that has often tended to be more a carnival of flattery.
As in the past, Mr. Putin focused on domestic affairs, answering questions about garbage collection, airfares to the Russian Far East, doctors’ salaries and many other, often highly local issues. But he used a question from Dimitri K. Simes, a Russian-born American expert on Russia, to riff about American politics and to take another swipe at accusations that Moscow had interfered in the 2016 presidential election.
