LDPR insists leader did not say Russians would toast Trump victory with champagne

Representatives of Russia’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDPR) serving in the State Duma sent a letter to the US National Intelligence Director’s office saying that party leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky did not say that “the whole of Russia [would] drink champagne” if Republican candidate Donald Trump won the United States presidential election, announced the party’s press office on Tuesday.

According to the press office, Zhirinovsky was mentioned in US intelligence report on Russia’s interference in the elections, specifically as having said that all Russians would drink champagne if Trump were to win. The report was prepared by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and the National Security Agency (NSA).

Though LDPR’s press office did deny the US intelligence community’s claims on Zhirinovsky’s comments about champagne, it did agree that there were many Trump sympathizers amid the Russian population. Furthermore, the press office insisted that Zhirinovsky supposedly got the idea to drink champagne only after Trump’s victory had been announced, adding that “if certain American analysts want to sip Russian champagne, the chairman of the Liberal Democratic Party [would] send a box of bubbly to the address of the Russian Embassy in the United States.”