The Kremlin on Austria’s Government Scandal: Don’t Look at Us

The Kremlin says it knows one thing about the scandal that brought down Austria’s top nationalist politician over a leaked video featuring an alleged Russian oligarch’s niece. That it’s got nothing to do with the Russian state.

“I can’t assess the appearance of this video because it doesn’t apply to either the Russian Federation or the president or the government,” President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, told reporters on a conference call Monday. “We don’t know for sure who this woman is, whether she is Russian, whether she is a Russian national. Therefore, this story doesn’t and can’t have anything to do with us.”