By The newspaper
Feb 22, 2024, 7:47 PM EST
The White House justified this Thursday some controversial comments by President Joe Biden about his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, in which he called him a “crazy son of a bitch.”
National Security Council spokesman John Kirby explained that Biden used “plain and direct” words to refer to Putin because that is how the US should view the “threat posed by Russia.”
“This is how we must address the threat (…) in a clear, direct and transparent way,” Kirby stressed.
Kirby’s remarks come after the Kremlin criticized Biden for his comments, accusing him of behaving like a “Hollywood cowboy.”
“If the president of that country uses such vocabulary, he should be ashamed. “It is clear that Mr. Biden exhibits behavior in the style of a Hollywood cowboy for internal political reasons,” presidential spokesman Dmitri Peskov said in statements to Russian public television.
“It is unlikely that such rude statements from the mouth of the president of the United States could in any way offend the head of another state, especially someone like President Putin. But it is a great shame for his own country, for the United States of America,” added the Russian spokesperson. “He would like to offend Putin, but it is not possible for him to succeed.”
For his part, the Russian president called Biden “rude” and described his words as “ordinary.”
Biden, who in the past called Putin a “war criminal,” called the Kremlin head “crazy SOB” during a donation rally in San Francisco on Wednesday, according to the American press.
“This is the last existential threat, it is the climate. “We have a crazy ‘SOB’ like that guy, Putin, and others, and we always have to worry about nuclear conflicts, but the existential threat to humanity is the climate,” the president declared.
In addition, Biden also accused Putin and his “henchmen” of ending the life of the Russian opposition leader, Alexei Navalny, who died on February 16 in prison.
Putin and Biden last met in Geneva in June 2021 and, after the start of the war in Ukraine, contacts between the two countries were reduced to a minimum.
Washington has led, together with the European Union, the strategy of diplomatic isolation and economic sanctions to dissuade Russia from stopping its invasion of Ukraine.
However, recently the Russian president stated that he preferred Biden in the White House over former President Donald Trump.
With information from EFE.
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