By Eurohoops team/ info@eurohoops.net
“People ask me questions sometimes, ‘Oh, your boy Putin did this,'” Mozgov told ESPN during the Lakers‘ trip to New York to face the Knicks. “He’s not my boy, first of all. He’s my president, but he’s not my friend. And he never asks me what [to] do.
“Some of the things he does, you’ve got to understand, like Trump, like Obama, like American presidents [try to make] America better, this is the same way. It’s like any country — Putin or whoever. It’s for everybody — whatever decision you make, you probably think how it will be better for your people. If I was president, I would be the best to my people. It’s hard to say because sometimes I don’t really know what they’re talking about,” Mozgov says. “They say [Putin] has got these rules, he’s got those rules. I don’t really follow politics to know everything that he signs.”
“I’m not really into politics,” Mozgov explains, “but whatever he [does], Trump, people get mad and say, ‘He did this. He does this.’ But I don’t know why being friends with somebody is bad. Now, he say he try to make a better relationship with Russia, and I don’t see nothing wrong with that. It’s better than fighting against each other. I don’t think it’s going to happen overnight because it’s been here forever — the competition — but I don’t know. I don’t think it’s bad to be friends.”
According to the Russian center many Cold War-era ideas still persist in the US. “It seems to me that there are stereotypes of Russia [from] back in the day that are still there,” he said. “I know a lot of [people who] have been in Russia and they say, ‘Oh, my god. This is different than what I thought.'”