US election campaign turning into Halloween, says Russian diplomat

VLADIVOSTAK: Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said on Sunday that the ongoing presidential election campaign in the United States has turned into a "hellish show" and "Halloween" that is witnessing "absolute madness".

Zakharova, who attended the Eastern Economic Forum (EEF) in Vladivostok, asserted that "manipulation of all types of information, propaganda and other components" is quite evident in the ongoing campaign which features former US President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamal Harris, his Democratic Party rival.

"Although why do we always follow their lead, use the cliches they throw out? What kind of race is this? This is some kind of, pardon me, Halloween. Because these are not candidates who defend their positions. This is some kind of absolute madness, a monstrous theatre of the absurd, where there is no place for election programmes, adequate debates, or exchanges of remarks cleared of insults. It is all compromising material, aggression, insults. As they say, 'hate speech', that is, the vocabulary of hatred and malice," said the Russian diplomat in an interview with the state-owned TASS news agency.

The 2024 White House race has entered the final stretch with less than 60 days remaining now for the November 5 finale.

"What kind of election campaign is this? No, of course not, it's really some kind of Halloween. And the images - look at how they perceive the same Harris, [current US President Joe] Biden. The American public no longer takes them seriously. If they are fans of the Democratic Party, they simply defend the Democratic candidates, they simply say: "We will simply be for them, because we are for the Democratic Party, and we don't even want to look at them, because we can't look at them." Or they start ridiculing their obvious vices, not even shortcomings, but corruption vices, some other ones. This is not a debate, this is not an election campaign. This is some kind of hellish show," Zakharova added.

The Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson mentioned that Moscow will continue to raise the issue of the "West's complicity" in Ukrainian attack on the Kursk region, including during various events scheduled at the United Nations General Assembly in New York, later this month that will see participation of Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

"We are already doing this. And at the Security Councils [of the UN], which are taking place. The first deputy permanent representative of Russia to the UN, Mr. [Dmitry] Polyansky, spoke just now, and he spoke about exactly this, about terrorist attacks on the Kursk region, not from the rostrum at the General Assembly, but sitting at the round table of the Security Council," Zakharova told TASS on the sidelines of the Eastern Economic Forum.

"As for the corridors, there is both confrontation and cooperation. As the President of the Russian Federation said, we have not had any contact with those with whom we usually have confrontation for a long time," the diplomat noted.