- ‘This is a huge shame for the country itself… for the US. When a president uses this kind of language, it is shameful,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
The Kremlin denounced Joe Biden’s use of “embarrassing language” after the US president called Russian President Vladimir Putin a “crazy SOB” at an event to raise awareness about climate change in San Francisco.
‘This is a huge shame for the country itself… for the US. When a president uses this kind of language, it is shameful,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. He noted that Biden’s statement was a poor attempt to come across as a “Hollywood cowboy.”
In a brief report on the website of Russia’s state news agency TASS, Peskov was quoted as saying: “Biden’s words about Putin cannot hurt the Russian president, but they are an embarrassment to the United States itself.”
Biden’s full comment to a small group of reporters was: “We have a crazy SOB like that guy Putin, but the existential threat to humanity is the climate.”
Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, a close ally of Putin, said the real “existential threat” in the world was “useless old guys, like Biden himself.” He then accused the president of being “willing to start a war with Russia.”
President Joe Biden was speaking at an event about climate change when he appeared to go off script to denounce Putin
Russian President Vladimir Putin is globally involved in the death of his political rival Alexei Navalny
‘This is a huge shame for the country itself… for the US. When a president uses this kind of language, it is shameful,” said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, pictured here.
Peskov said: “The use of such language against the head of another state by the President of the United States is unlikely to offend our President, President Putin.
“But it demeans those who use such vocabulary.”
Peskov said the comment 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 a bad word to address you? This has never happened before. Therefore, I think such vocabulary humiliates America itself,” Peskov said.
He later added in comments to a state television reporter: “This is a shame for the country itself, I mean the United States.”
The comments come less than a week after Biden and many other Western leaders condemned Putin and accused him of killing political rival Alexei Navalny in an Arctic penal colony.
“We don’t know exactly what happened, but there is no doubt that Nalvany’s death was a result of something that Putin and his thugs did,” Biden said at the White House after Russian prison officials announced Navalny had died .
The Kremlin has denied any 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, for which Russia was rebuked by the United States and other Western countries. Biden’s responses have further cooled already bitter US-Russia relations.
On Tuesday, Biden said the US will announce a major package of sanctions against Russia over Navalny’s death and the war in Ukraine.
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 beyond. However, he also recently compared himself to Navalny, implying that they had both faced politically motivated persecutions.
“I don’t know where this comes from,” Biden said on Wednesday in response to Trump comparing himself to Navalny.
Biden has cursed “son of a bitch” at others before. In January 2022, he was caught on the hot mic using the same expletive against a Fox News White House reporter.
The Scranton resident has a tendency to go off script during election fundraisers and in recent months has taken issue with the Chinese government, the Republican Party and U.S. ally Israel over its bombing of the Gaza Strip.