Leonid Bershidsky, Columnist

How Fair Is It to Call Putin a Killer?

Russia's president bears responsibility for the state's victims.

February 7, 2017 at 3:10 PM UTC

Leonid Bershidsky, formerly Bloomberg Opinion’s Europe columnist, is a member of the Bloomberg News Automation Team. He recently published Russian translations of George Orwell’s “1984” and Franz Kafka’s “The Trial.”

A system that kills.
Photographer: OLGA MALTSEVA/AFP/Getty Images

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Many Americans, including leading Republicans, were affronted by President Donald Trump's nonchalant response to Fox News anchor Bill O'Reilly's characterization of Russian President Vladimir Putin as a "killer." The Kremlin, for its part, demanded an apology from Fox -- and got a sarcastic reply from O'Reilly instead. Something that has fallen by the wayside in all these exchanges, though, is the question of how fair it is to call Putin a killer.

QuickTake Vladimir Putin