The Kremlin slammed Joe Biden’s use of ‘shameful language’ after the US president called Russian President Vladimir Putin a ‘crazy SOB’ during an event to raise awareness of climate change in San Francisco.
‘This is a huge shame for the country itself… for the US. If a president uses that kind of language, it’s shameful,’ Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. He remarked that Biden’s statement was a poor attempt to appear like a ‘Hollywood cowboy.’
A brief report on the Russian-state news agency TASS’ website quoted Peskov as saying: ‘Biden’s words about Putin cannot hurt the Russian president, but they are a disgrace to the United States itself.’
Biden’s full remark to a small group of reporters was: ‘We have a crazy SOB like that guy Putin but the existential threat to humanity is climate.’
Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, a staunch Putin ally, said that the true ‘existential threat’ in the world was ‘useless old geezers, like Biden himself.’ He went on to accuse the president of being ‘ready to start a a war with Russia.’
President Joe Biden was speaking at a climate change event when he appeared to go off script to denounce Putin
Russian President Vladimir Putin has been implicated worldwide in the death of his political rival Alexei Navalny
‘This is a huge shame for the country itself… for the US. If a president uses that kind of language, it’s shameful,’ Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, shown here, said
Peskov said: ‘The use of such language against the head of another state by the president of the United States is unlikely to infringe on our president, President Putin.
‘But it debases those who use such vocabulary.’
Mr Peskov said the remark was ‘probably some kind of attempt to look like a Hollywood cowboy. But honestly I don’t think it’s possible.’
‘Has Mr Putin ever used one crude word to address you? This has never happened. Therefore, I think that such vocabulary debases America itself,’ Mr Peskov said.
He later added in comments to a state television reporter: ‘This is a disgrace for the country itself, I mean the United States.’
The remarks comes less than week after Biden and many other western leaders condemned Putin and accused of murdering political rival Alexei Navalny in an Arctic penal colony.
‘We don’t know exactly what happened, but there is no doubt that the death of Nalvany was a consequence of something that Putin and his thugs did,’ Biden said at the White House after Russian prison officials announced that Navalny had died.
The Kremlin has denied involvement in Navalny’s death and said Western claims that Putin was responsible are unacceptable.
Biden and Putin remain deeply at odds over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine two years ago, over which Russia has been sanctioned by the United States and other Western nations. Biden’s reactions have put a further chill into already bitter U.S.-Russian relations.
On Tuesday, Biden said the U.S. will announce a major package of sanctions against Russia over Navalny’s death and the Ukraine war.
Biden’s expected Republican opponent in November, former President Donald Trump, has expressed admiration for Putin both during his 2017-2021 White House tenure and afterward. However, he also recently compared himself to Navalny, implying that they both had faced politically motivated prosecutions.
‘I don’t know where the hell this comes from,’ Biden said on Wednesday reacting to Trump comparing himself to Navalny.
Biden has previously cursed ‘son of a bitch’ at others. In January 2022, he was caught on the hot mic using the same term of abuse against a Fox News White House reporter.
The Scranton-native has a tendency to go off script during election fundraisers and in recent months has dug into the Chinese government, the Republican Party and U.S. ally Israel for its bombing of the Gaza Strip.