Russia, US spar over protests on Twitter

Russia on Tuesday took to Twitter to denounce an earlier tweet from the US ambassador about the rough handling of activists who tried to stage a sit-in protest over Vladimir Putin‘s election win.

The pointed exchange between the foreign ministry and US ambassador Michael McFaul followed the arrest of more than 600 demonstrators in Moscow and Saint Petersburg on Monday after Putin’s triumph in presidential elections.

All the demonstrators were released overnight but several opposition movement leaders who called for a sit-in on Moscow’s central Pushkin Square face the threat of penalties or jail terms of up to 15 days.

“Troubling to watch arrests of peaceful demonstrators at Pushkin Square,” McFaul tweeted shortly after helmeted riot police moved in to break up the rally

“Freedom of assembly and freedom of speech are universal values,” he said.

McFaul was the architect of US President Barack Obama’s “reset” in ties with the more reform-minded outgoing President Dmitry Medvedev. But he vexed Moscow on his arrival in January by immediately meeting with top anti-Putin leaders.

The Russian foreign ministry’s response to Twitter user @McFaul was quick and biting.

“The police on Pushkin Square were many times more humane that what we witnessed with the dispersal of the Occupy Wall Street protests and the tent cities in Europe,” the foreign ministry said.

McFaul also received an angry reply from Arkady Dvorkovich — the economic adviser of Medvedev.

“And the detention of protesters in the US — is this normal?” Dvorkovich asked.

Putin’s return to the post he held in 2000-2008 was preceded by his angry accusation that the US State Department helped incite the protests in a bid to complicate his return.

The former KGB spy sparred with the United States through most of his first two terms as president and had been one of Russia’s strongest critics of the NATO-led campaign in Libya.

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