MOSCOW. Feb 5 (Interfax) - Russian nationalist politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky has described Michael McFaul, the outgoing U.S. ambassador to Russia, as "one of the best ambassadors in the entire history of diplomatic relations between Russia and the United States."
Speaking on a program on Russia's Rossiya 24 television channel on Tuesday, Zhirinovsky, who is leader of Russia's Liberal Democratic Party, argued it was unlikely that McFaul was telling the truth when he cited family affairs as the reason for his departure from Moscow.
"I think he has failed to carry out the task that the State Department set for him - to organize a kind of 'Orange' revolution in Moscow after the elections in December 2011. It did start - people went to Bolotnaya Square, - but it didn't go any further than that. His task was to do what the American ambassador is doing in Kyiv at the moment," Zhirinovsky said.
"That's what they expected Michael McFaul to do in Moscow in 2012, in 2013. But two years passed, and when the Maidan began in Kyiv, the State Department realized that McFaul wouldn't be able to produce a version of the Maidan in Moscow, and hence the need to replace him."
Maidan is a colloquial term for the current pro-European protests in Ukraine - "maidan" is one of the Ukrainian words for "square," from Kyiv's Independence Square, the focal point of the protests.
"I'm not sure that it's his own desire to leave. He didn't want to. I've seen him several times, and he hinted that he would possibly leave soon and there would be a new ambassador. I could see sadness in his eyes. I think that we're losing a more commendable U.S. representative and now the same kind of ambassador as the one in Ukraine may arrive," Zhirinovsky said.
McFaul "isn't someone who would have been happy to use any trick to carry out his task of stirring the 'Orange' forces in Russia into action," he said.
"We must be grateful to Michael McFaul for wanting to remain a diplomat and scholar, after all," Zhirinovsky said.