In an interview with The Intercept's Jeremy Scahill, Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein said her December 2015 seat beside Russian president Vladimir Putin at RT's 10th anniversary dinner produced only a perfunctory handshake and no substantive conversation. Stein said she did not know she would be seated next to Putin or Michael Flynn, that Putin and his companions arrived abruptly and stayed only briefly, and that she heard no words exchanged between English speakers and Russians. Stein denied receiving any payment or compensation from RT, saying RT offered to pay her travel and she declined. She described the trip as a public effort to promote nuclear disarmament and meet other peace advocates, including former Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura, and said the dinner itself was irrelevant to that mission. Stein also criticized what she called a neo-McCarthyist anti-Russia surge and warned about nuclear risk from U.S.-Russia tensions. She added a personal detail that she is a fish-eating vegetarian and does not recall seeing caviar at the event.
