The Washington Post reports:

President Vladimir Putin, Kremlin political consultants and state-controlled news media have found an American to admire: Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

FDR, according to a consistent story line here, tamed power-hungry tycoons to save his country from the Great Depression. He restored his people’s spirits while leading the United States for 12 years and spearheaded the struggle against “outside enemies,” as the mass-circulation tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda put it….

And Roosevelt ran for a third and fourth term because his country needed him. Translation: Putin, too, should stay.

Putin used the Roosevelt analogy Thursday when he spoke to reporters after a televised question-and-answer session with citizens….

In a glowing 90-minute documentary on FDR that aired Sunday on RTR, a state TV channel usually given to growling at Washington, a narrator said that America’s 32nd president “came to the conclusion that he was the only person in the country who could lead America in the right direction through the most difficult period in the country’s history.”

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