Meddling in their democracy is putting it very mildly. [Washington] basically restructured their entire political economy, and then left it in a complete shambles.
[…]
I interviewed, with Alex Zaitchik, the head of the OSCE mission, which is the election observer mission, which is basically a Western European-led body. He was a British MP, and he straight up said the [1996] election was stolen. It was fraudulent and “the OSCE did everything to wash my report,” and so it was officially known as free and fair. There was fraud in every single Russian election.
I mean it was fairly significant fraud by our standards, not hugely significant, let’s say, by some hardcore dictatorial standards, but certainly three, four, five percent was often stolen and the template was really set in the 1996 elections that got Boris Yeltsin from about a 3% [approval] rating.