Daily Beast: “Russian President Vladimir Putin was practically glowing while leaving a Russian Orthodox Christmas Eve service this Wednesday. Speaking to state TV reporters, he gushed about ‘the anticipation of a miracle’ that can get a person through any rough patch in their life. Putin wasn’t talking about the United States, of course, but he might as well have been: America’s outgoing president had just delivered the biggest Christmas present to the Kremlin imaginable by inciting a violent insurrection. Hundreds of Trump supporters descended upon the Capitol, launching a brazen attack that defiled the most precious symbol of U.S. democracy and attempting to overturn the outcome of an election in favor of their conspiracy-peddling idol.”

“Russian state media had played its own part in amplifying Donald Trump’s baseless claims of electoral fraud and gleefully predicting that post-election violence would inevitably follow. ‘There will be blood,’ asserted Russian lawmakers and state media talking heads, a prospect they considered to be ‘excellent.’ And indeed, there was blood. Vesti reporter Denis Davydov was embedded in the thick of it all, interviewing sweaty seditionists with bloody knuckles in between their attempts to storm Capitol Hill. ‘The United States never experienced anything like this,’ Davydov noted. In his report for Vesti, U.S. correspondent Valentin Bogdanov asserted that the violence is not over: ‘While the Democrats gained control of Congress and the Senate, that doesn’t mean they can control the minds of the people. January 6, 2021 is forever written into the American political calendar. For some, it’s a dark date they will try to forget. For others, it’s a day to remember – or perhaps to repeat.'”