US President Joe Biden arrived Thursday in Normandy, France, to commemorate the 80th anniversary of D-Day. On that occasion, ABC News interviewed the president.
During the interview, Biden claimed to have a long relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin when journalist David Muir asked him if he was concerned about Putin's nuclear threats.
– I have known him for more than 40 years, Biden said and continued:
– He's been worrying me for 40 years, and he's not a respectable man. He is a dictator.
In the mid-1980s, Putin was a little-known but rising KGB agent in his early 30s, while the then 42-year-old Biden was a US senator.
The Cold War was also ongoing, and contact between the West and the Soviet Union was minimal, as it was still the period of the “Iron Curtain” separating Europe.
The Kremlin responds
The Kremlin responded to the interview on Friday, saying: “It is often difficult to understand what US President Joe Biden means by his statements.”
Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov also stated: “Sometimes you just wonder what the President of the United States means, including when he talks about knowing Putin for 40 years.”
He went on to say that one could draw very profound analytical conclusions about how Biden recognized him at that time.
As for the dictator's statement, Peskov said that Putin “does not and will not respond” to such “insults.” Peskov also expressed his surprise at the use of such “speech and such expressions regarding another head of state.”
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