Russia seethes over ‘killer’ comment
MOSCOW — President Vladimir Putin dryly wished President Joe Biden “good health” on Thursday after the American leader assented to a description of his Russian counterpart as a “killer,” and longrunning tensions morphed into a furious exchange of trans-Atlantic taunts.
The previous evening, Russia took the rare step of recalling its ambassador to Washington after Biden’s comments in a television interview, warning of the possibility of an “irreversible deterioration of relations.” On Thursday, seated in a gilded chair on the seventh anniversary of Russia’s annexation of Crimea, Putin all but called Biden a killer himself.
“When I was a child, when we argued in the courtyard, we said the following: ‘If you call someone names, that’s really your name,’ ” Putin said, quoting a Russian schoolyard rhyme. “When we characterize other people, or even when we characterize other states, other people, it is always as though we are looking in the mirror.”
In an interview with ABC News that was broadcast on Wednesday, when asked whether he thought Putin was a “killer,” Biden responded: “Mmm hmm, I do.” He further pledged that Putin was “going to pay” for Russian interference in the 2020 election, which was detailed in a U.S. intelligence report this week.
Earlier this month, the Biden administration announced sanctions against Russian officials after declassifying an intelligence finding that Russia’s domestic intelligence agency had orchestrated the poisoning of opposition leader Alexei Navalny.
At the White House on Thursday, press secretary Jen Psaki, when asked if Biden regretted his characterization of Putin, said, “Nope. The president gave a direct answer to a direct question.”
Psaki repeated warnings that sanctions and other actions against Russia are coming “in weeks, not months.”
“There are a range of other tools at the disposal of any president, seen and unseen,” Psaki said, “and we’re not going to get ahead of the process of what considerations are underway.”
Konstantin Kosachev, the head of the Foreign Affairs Committee in Russia’s upper house of Parliament, warned that Russia would respond further, without specifying how, to Biden’s comments “if explanations and apologies do not follow from the American side.”
The Russian Foreign Ministry said late Wednesday that it had summoned its envoy in Washington, Anatoly Antonov, to Moscow “in order to analyze what needs to be done in the context of relations with the United States.”
“We are interested in preventing an irreversible deterioration in relations, if the Americans become aware of the risks associated with this,” Maria Zakharova, the Russian Foreign Ministry’s spokeswoman, said in a statement.
Putin, in his comments on Thursday, picked up on the notion being pushed by the Kremlin’s news media that Biden was somehow unwell.
“I would tell him: Be healthy,” Putin said, in response to a question about Biden’s comments posed by a woman in Crimea in a televised video conference on Thursday. “I wish him good health. I say this without irony, without joking.”
On Thursday evening, Putin appeared to try to tamp down tensions, and said he would direct officials to set up a phone call with Biden in the coming days because “we can and we must continue to have relations.”