President Biden’s assessment that Russian President Vladimir Putin is a “killer” has sparked fury in Moscow and jolted the Kremlin chief into a direct response.
“What would I say to Biden? I would wish him good health. I say that without irony or joking,” Putin said Thursday.
Russian Foreign Ministry officials announced that Russian Ambassador Anatoly Antonov would return from Washington to discuss “preventing an irreversible deterioration” in U.S.-Russia relations, following Biden’s criticism of Putin and the release this week of a new U.S. intelligence community report on Russian interference in the 2020 elections. Putin attributed the recent controversies to “genetic” and cultural differences between Russians and Americans.
“The U.S. authorities, in general, seek certain relations with us but only in areas the U.S [is] interested in, and on their own terms,” Putin said, per state-run media. “They think that we are just like them, but we aren’t. Our genetic, cultural, and moral codes are different. However, we know how to protect our interests.”
RUSSIA WARNS OF ‘IRREVERSIBLE DETERIORATION’ IN US TIES AFTER BIDEN JABS PUTIN
Putin authorized the annexation of Crimea and invasion of Eastern Ukraine in 2014 after Ukrainian lawmakers impeached and removed a pro-Russian president who had blocked a political and economic deal between Ukraine and the European Union.
“The Russians want an end to sanctions. They would like to continue their aggression in Ukraine and have the United States and the [European Union] let it happen without consequences,” said former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine John Herbst, director of the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center. “There’s bad relations between the United States and Russia because the United States got tired of years of Russian aggression and provocations and finally began to take some measures.”
White House press secretary Jen Psaki declined to answer a question directly on Thursday about whether Biden’s “killer” comment could further erode relations. Instead, she said Biden and Putin agree the two sides should work together when their interests align. “No, the president gave a direct answer to a direct question,” she said moments later.
But she stressed the president is “not going to hold back” on criticizing the Russian strongman.
Putin resents the fact that NATO expanded to allow former Soviet vassal states into the transatlantic alliance, but the Central and Eastern European nations regard the security pact as a bulwark against a potential Russian invasion. And Western powers assess that Russian intelligence operatives used a Soviet-made chemical weapon to poison a former Russian double agent, as well as Putin’s most prominent domestic critic — Alexei Navalny, who was imprisoned after recovering from the assassination attempt — in the last two years. Another high-profile Putin critic, opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, was shot dead near the Kremlin in 2015.
“The price he’s gonna pay we’ll — you’ll see shortly,” Biden said in a televised interview. “That trite expression, ‘walk and chew gum at the same time,’ there’re places where it’s in our mutual interest to work together.”
Kremlin officials seemed stung by the reference to Putin’s presumed body count.
“These statements from the president of the United States are very bad,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters. “It is clear that he does not want to get the relationship with our country back on track, and we will proceed from that.”
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And while Putin tried to take the rhetorical high road, he couldn’t help but add a jab of his own.
“When we judge other people or evaluate other states, nations, we always seem to look in the mirror. We always see ourselves there,” he said. “During childhood, when we argued with each other in the yard, we’d say, ‘It takes one to know one!'”
