Russian President Vladimir Putin has entered the US election campaign.
Asked in an interview about which candidate is best for Russia after the US presidential elections in November, in which Democrat Joe Biden and Republican Donald Trump are expected to face each other, the Russian president has pronounced a name for the first time: “Biden.”
“He is a person with more experience, he is predictable, he is an old-school politician, but we will work with any leader whom the American people trust,” Putin said in an interview orchestrated with one of the journalists close to the Kremlin, Pavel Zarubin. .
“President Putin of Russia just paid me a great compliment, actually,” Donald Trump responded at a rally in North Charleston, South Carolina, on Wednesday night.
“He just said that he would rather have Joe Biden as president than Trump.
Now that's a compliment... And of course, he would say that,” he stated, as reported by the ABC News television network.
Trump's response to the Russian president's alleged snub comes after the Republican front-runner in the White House race said this weekend that he would "encourage" Russia to "do whatever it wants" with foreign allies. of the United States not to pay its “fair share” of NATO defense funds, which provoked the immediate reaction of the Secretary General of the Alliance, Jens Stoltenberg, and other Western partners.
Putin's statements in favor of Biden contradict the widespread opinion in Russia that his plan, after the setbacks of 2022, has been to hold the front until there is a replacement in the White House less inclined to support Ukraine.
A Russian source emphasizes that Trump approved more sanctions against Moscow in his first term than during Barack Obama's government, although he admits that the support of the Democrats is now unequivocal and the arrival of the Republican would be something similar to throwing the dice in the air again. .
At the North Charleston rally, Trump explained the reasons why, in his opinion, Putin would prefer Biden's victory.
“I stopped Nord Stream 2 [a German-Russian gas pipeline to bring natural gas from Russia to Europe], and [Biden] approved it right after I left [the White House], so Putin is not a fan mine actually,” Trump said, referring to the sanctions he imposed on the project, as well as the subsequent lifting of them by Biden.
The most critical argued that the facility would give Russia energy dominance over Europe, just the opposite of what has happened since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which has allowed the United States to become Europe's leading gas supplier.
The supposed preference over Biden also contrasts with the statements that Putin himself made a week ago in the controversial interview with American presenter Tucker Carlson, an icon of the ultra-conservatives.
Despite considering the American leader “predictable,” the Russian president acknowledged that the last time he spoke with him was before the war began.
“I think you are making a big mistake of historic proportions by supporting everything that happens there, in Ukraine, moving away from Russia,” was what Putin allegedly told Biden three years ago.
Despite mentioning the name of his supposedly favorite candidate, the Russian president has assured that “it would not be appropriate to interfere” in the US campaign.
He said this when asked about Biden's alleged health problems.
The 81-year-old American president has in the last week confused several European leaders, the French leader, Emanuel Macron, and the former German chancellor Angela Merkel, with his predecessors in office, who died years ago, François Mitterrand and Helmut Kohl, respectively.
“I met with Biden in Switzerland three years ago,” Putin recalled.
Even at that time they said he was incompetent.
I did not see that.
He looked at his paper, I looked at mine.
Nothing".
However, and despite his good words, the Russian president has unleashed another barb against the democrat.
“When he got off the helicopter he hit his head... Well, anyone who hasn't hit their head before should throw the first stone.”
The last face-to-face meeting between Biden and Putin took place in June 2021. Russia had begun deploying its troops around Ukraine at the beginning of that year, and that summit seemed to have solved through diplomacy a crisis that ultimately turned out to be only a ploy by the Kremlin to buy time and prepare its offensive.
Both leaders called each other by phone on several occasions over the following months, and on February 21, 2022, three days before beginning the invasion of Ukraine, Paris announced that the leaders of the United States and Russia had accepted Macron's invitation to celebrate. a tripartite meeting on Ukraine.
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