By Aaron Miller-
Vladimir Putin has accused Joe Biden of hypocrisy after the U.S president said the Russian president has no soul, and also said he thinks he is a killer.
In a blunt interview given by the U.S president, Biden said he and Putin knew each other quite well, and that he had looked in his eyes and told the Russian leader, he did not think he has a soul.
The interview produced a negative reaction from the Kremlin, who pointed to America’s history in a tit-for tat show of rivalry, overlooking the fact that Biden was talking about Putin personally. Biden as a fresh leader has no known skeletons in his closet.
Putin criticized Biden for America’s past atrocities, including the slaughter of Native Americans, and holding black people as slaves,.
He argued that has led to current racial tensions in the United States.
‘Otherwise where would the Black Lives Matter movement come from,’ Putin argued.
He then offered his own message to the American president.
‘I would say to him: I wish you good health,’ Putin said. ‘I say that without irony and not as a joke.’
Apology
Russia is demanding an apology from the United States for the strong words. The provocative comments prompted the Kremlin to make the highly unusual move on Wednesday to recall Anatoly Antonov, its ambassador to the US, for urgent consultations over the future of US-Russia ties.
Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said it was a ‘very bad statement by the U.S. president’ that made it clear that ‘he doesn’t want to normalize relations.’
‘He clearly does not want to improve relations with our country, and we will be proceeding based precisely on this,’ Peskov told reporters on a conference call on Thursday. ‘There hasn’t been anything like this in history.’
Putin said: “it takes one to know one”, as Kremlin officials promised vengeance, unless the US president apologises for describing his Russian counterpart as a “killer”.
Hysterical
As poor relations escalated, Russian officials described Biden as “demented and hysterical” in response to his TV interview that Putin had orchestrated murders. Inflaming the situation was Biden’s vow that Putin would soon “pay a price” for alleged election meddling.
Moscow responded dramatically, by recalling its ambassador to Washington in protest at the interview, and on Thursday officials went on the offensive.
Washington has already imposed sanctions over the poisoning of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, and also declassified an intelligence report stating that Putin directed interference in the 2020 US presidential election.
“These are very bad statements from the president of the United States,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Thursday. “He clearly does not want to improve ties and we will have to proceed from that understanding.”
Speaking on Russian TV, Putin said: “I remember in my childhood, when we argued in the courtyard we used to say: it takes one to know one. And that’s not a coincidence, not just a children’s saying or joke.
“We always see our own traits in other people and think they are like how we really are. And as a result we assess [a person’s] activities and give assessments.
Konstantin Kosachev, deputy chairman of the Russian parliament’s upper house, said that Moscow would likely take further steps “if the American side does not offer an explanation or apology.
”’We always see in another person our own qualities and think that he is the same as us,’ Putin said.