Russian Communist Party head Gennady Zyuganov said on Wednesday that his controversial comment branding the U.S. diplomat slain in Libya last week “the lowest dog” was “distorted” by Twitter’s 140-character limit.
U.S. Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens was killed along with three colleagues when rioters attacked the U.S. consulate in the Libyan city of Benghazi on September 11 during protests about a trailer for the anti-Islam film ‘The Innocence of Muslims’.
Zyuganov’s comment was condemned by the U.S. State Department.
But Zyuganov later told RIA Novosti his words had been taken out of context and that only a couple of sentences were snatched and tweeted from a much longer statement by his aides.
By “shot like the lowest dog,” he had implied, he said, “shot mercilessly, without pity” and the statement was a condemnation of violence.
He stood, however, by his “reap what you sow” remark and said that U.S. “interference” in the affairs of sovereign states was coming back to haunt them “like a boomerang.”
Zyuganov’s press service named the employee responsible for managing the Communist Party leader’s Twitter account as Denis Parfyonov, the Kommersant newspaper reported.
Parfyonov told Kommersant his responsibility only covers technical aspects of the Twitter account, and all tweets are dictated personally by Zyuganov.
“We type in what Gennady says word-for-word and do not make anything up,” Parfyonov said.