Putin was speaking in terms of historic Soviet communism in the recent interview (Wednesday) detailed in\u00a0Newsweek<\/em><\/a>.\u00a0“The Democratic Party is traditionally closer to the so-called liberal values, closer to social democratic ideas,”<\/strong>\u00a0Putin began. “And it was from the social democratic environment that the Communist Party evolved.”<\/p>\n “After all, I was a member of the Soviet Communist Party for nearly 20 years” Putin added. “I was a rank-and-file member, but it can be said that I believed in the party’s ideas.\u00a0I still like many of these left-wing values. Equality and fraternity. What is bad about them?<\/strong>\u00a0In fact, they are akin to Christian values.”<\/p>\n “Yes, they are difficult to implement, but they are very attractive, nevertheless.\u00a0In other words, this can be seen as an ideological basis for developing contacts with the Democratic representative.<\/strong>”<\/p>\n The Russian president also invoked that historically Russian communists in the Soviet era would have been fully on board the Black Lives Matter movement and other civil rights related causes.\u00a0“So, this is something that can be seen, to a degree, as common values, if not a unifying agent for us,”<\/strong>\u00a0the Russian president\u00a0said<\/a>. “People of my generation remember a time when huge portraits of Angela Davis, a member of the U.S. Communist Party and an ardent fighter for the rights of African Americans, were on view around the Soviet Union.”<\/p>\n So there it is: Putin is saying his own personal ideological past could be a basis of “shared values” with a Biden presidency, again, it what\u00a0appears to be a sophisticated bit of trolling that he knows Biden won’t welcome one bit<\/strong>. Or let’s call it a ‘Russian endorsement Putin style’. The Associated Press and others\u00a0described it<\/a>\u00a0as Putin\u00a0“hedging his bets”<\/strong>, however.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/zh-prod-1cc738ca-7d3b-4a72-b792-20bd8d8fa069.storage.googleapis.com\/s3fs-public\/styles\/inline_image_desktop\/public\/inline-images\/putinandbiden.jpg?itok=TXDWdFZv)