Newest Rangers star Artemi Panarin fired shots at Russian President Vladimir Putin in an interview that aired Thursday on YouTube.
Panarin, in his native tongue, told Russian journalist Alexander Golovin that Putin doesn’t know right from wrong, becoming one of the first Russian athletes to publicly criticize the authoritarian leader. Fellow hockey star Alex Ovechkin, for example, has long gushed over Putin, and in 2017 started a social movement called “PutinTeam.”
“I think he no longer understands where — well, where — bad,” Panarin said, as translated by Google Translate. “It seems to me that it is already psychologically not so easy for him to soberly assess the situation, because there are many people who lead him to decisions.