Vlad’s alternative facts

Who knew Vladimir Putin could be such a kidder. Maybe he’s taking lessons from his “Saturday Night Live” counterpart.

This past week the Russian president suggested that those cyberattacks during the 2016 presidential election in the U.S. might have just been the work of some “patriotically minded” private Russian citizen. After all, he noted during interviews, hackers are such free spirits, “like artists.”

It was a bravura performance by the one-time head of Russia’s spy network who today remains a master manipulator of disinformation, backed up by his nation’s vast propaganda arm.

Yes, these Russian “artists,” “If they are patriotically minded, they start making their contributions — which are right, from their point of view — to the fight against those who say bad things about Russia.”

It was rather like Putin’s explanation of how those “little green men” and assorted Russian “tourists” ended up fighting in eastern Ukraine in 2014 in an effort to annex it to Russia.

U.S. intelligence agencies have, of course, concluded that Russian hackers working for Russia’s military intelligence agency were responsible for the hacks of the Democratic National Committee and subsequent leaks of that information to WikiLeaks. Similar cyberattacks were used during recent Dutch and French elections, and likely the Germans are on alert for them during their upcoming election.

It has taken months for Putin to come up with something other than a total denial. Now he, too, has entered the world of “alternative facts.”