An obscene re-tweet was posted briefly Wednesday on President Dmitry Medvedev’s official Twitter account, the Kremlin said, blaming the embarrassing incident on “interference” by an administration technical employee.
The post was quickly deleted from the account, but not before screen shots of it were captured by Internet users and circulated widely through Russian social networks and media websites.
“A rude re-tweet of a post appeared on Dmitry Medvedev’s Twitter account last night,” the Kremlin said in a statement, under the heading: “On the malfunction of Dmitry Medvedev’s Twitter account.”
“It became clear after an investigation that during a routine password change an employee responsible for technical maintenance of the account interfered in an unacceptable manner with the @MedvedevRussia” account. Those guilty will be punished.”
The post was a re-tweet from the blog of businessman and United Russia party member Konstantin Rykov and was posted late on Tuesday as Moscow saw a second day of protests against alleged electoral fraud by the United Russia party at last Sunday’s parliamentary polls.
“If a person writes in his blog ‘The Party of Swindlers and Thieves,’ he’s just a c**ksucking moron,” Rykov said.
Rykov’s tweet was an apparent reference to influential blogger and anti-graft activist Alexei Navalny, who was jailed for 15 days on Tuesday over his role in a recent protest.