🗣Putin contrasts Joe Biden’s pardon of Hunter with Ivan the Terrible , Peter the Great, Stalin’s treatment of their sons

President Biden’s pardon of his son Hunter despite promising not to showed his “human” side, and it’s not Russia’s place to “condemn” it, Vladimir Putin said at his year-end presser. “Sometimes, you know, they say silence is gold. Sometimes it’s better not to say anything.”

💬 “We know the famous painting Ivan the Terrible and His Son. Maybe it’s a legend, maybe it’s not,” Putin said, recalling the famous Ilya Repin work of the tsar cradling his dying son in his arms after dealing him a severe blow to the head, and contrasting the legend with Joe Biden and his son.

💬 “What happened to Peter the Great’s son Alexei…maybe it’s a legend, maybe it’s not,” Putin added, evoking the story of the imprisonment and execution of the tsar’s son on treason charges.

💬 “Or what happened to Stalin – and this was not a legend. When Stalin refused to swap his son Yakov for German General Friedrich Paulus, saying he would not swap a soldier for a field marshal,” Putin recalled, remembering the “rigid, and sometimes cruel” measures that needed to be taken to defeat the Nazis.