John McCain, the chairman of the U.S. Senate's Armed Services Committee, who served as a senator from Arizona for more than three decades, died on Saturday at the age of 81.
While U.S. and world leaders mourned the death of the longtime critic of President Vladimir Putin’s Russia, Russian policymakers and media personalities openly criticized the late senator for his anti-Kremlin views.
This is how Russia reacted to the news:
— Oleg Morozov, member of the Federation Council’s Foreign Affairs Committee:
“The enemy is dead… May the Lord accept his dark soul and determine its future.”
“He was good in his hatred toward Russia. He was the symbol of contemporary overt anti-Russian thinking.”
“Give him credit for his honest enmity, his honest hatred and intransigence. Others play a double game. He said what he thought.”
— Margarita Simonyan, editor-in-chief of the Kremlin-run RT news network:
“As a good Christian, I wish all the staunch enemies of my motherland peace and quiet. In the afterlife, of course.”
— Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov:
“He stood out among American politicians for his inexplicable and incomprehensible resentment of Russia. He didn’t like the very fact of its existence.”
— General Vladimir Dzhabarov, deputy chairman of the Federation Council’s Foreign Affairs Committee:
“Mr. McCain was always an American patriot. Unfortunately, however, the ‘Vietnam Syndrome’ had affected him all his life… He was an outspoken Russophobe over the past decades. Not only did he simply dislike our country, but he in fact hated it. Peace be upon him.”
— Konstantin Kosachev, chairman of the Federation Council’s Foreign Affairs Committee:
“His only ideology was to ‘defend your own and attack others,’ where the only criterion was loyalty to America and American interests, and not the criteria of peace, good and justice.”
“In that sense, McCain reflected the era in which he grew up and became a politician. An era of dividing the world into ‘us’ and ‘them.’ A ‘Cold War’ era in which our country was and remained his principle enemy.”
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