Putin criticizes U.S. response to Capitol attack
MOSCOW — Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday set a tough tone for his upcoming summit with President Joe Biden, accusing Washington of trying to contain Russia and citing its response to the deadly Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol as a manifestation of the West’s double standards.
Speaking at an economic forum in St. Petersburg, Mr. Putin said that arms control, global conflicts, the coronavirus pandemic and climate change are among the issues he and Mr. Biden would discuss at their June 16 summit in Geneva.
“We need to find ways of looking for a settlement in our relations, which are at an extremely low level now,” Mr. Putin said.
“We don’t have any issues with the U.S.,” he continued. “But it has an issue with us. It wants to contain our development and publicly talks about it. Economic restrictions and attempts to influence our country’s domestic politics, relying on forces they consider their allies inside Russia, stem from that.”
He voiced hope that the meeting will help ease tensions with Washington. Russia-U.S. ties have sunk to post-Cold War lows over Moscow’s 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula, accusations of Russian interference in elections in the U.S. and other Western nations, and cyberattacks that U.S. officials allege had Russian origins.
Mr. Putin reiterated that Russia rejects accusations of interfering in U.S. presidential elections, and he spoke critically of the U.S. response to the Capitol attack, which took place as Congress prepared to certify that Mr. Biden had defeated then-President Donald Trump in November.
“They weren’t just a crowd of robbers and rioters. Those people had come with political demands,” he said.
Mr. Putin pointed out that the heavy charges against hundreds of participants in the attack were filed even as the U.S. and its allies strongly criticized Belarus’ crackdown on antigovernment protests. And he charged that even as the West has criticized Russian authorities for a harsh response to anti- Kremlin demonstrations, protesters in Europe have faced an even tougher police response, with some shot in the eye by what he mockingly called “democratic rubber bullets.”
At a later videoconference with the heads of major international news agencies, Mr. Putin said “I don’t expect any breakthrough results” from the summit with Mr. Biden. The United States and Russia have some corresponding interests, he said, “despite certain disagreements. These disagreements are not the result of Russian actions.”
“We are not taking steps first — I’m talking about the steps that deteriorated our relations. It was not us who introduced sanctions against us, it was the United States who did that on every occasion and even without grounds, just because our country exists,” he said through a translator.
He also criticized the United States as being overconfident and drew a parallel with the Soviet Union.
“You know what the problem is? I will tell you as a former citizen of the former Soviet Union. What is the problem of empires — they think that they are so powerful that they can afford small errors and mistakes,” he said. “But the number of problems is growing. There comes a time when they can no longer be dealt with. And the United States, with a confident gait, a firm step, is going straight along the path of the Soviet Union.”
He also took time to deride the allegations that Russian hackers targeted a U.S. pipeline and a meat plant — accusations that have clouded the atmosphere before the summit.
“I do hope that people would realize that there hasn’t been any malicious Russian activity whatsoever,” he said. “I heard something about the meat plant. It’s sheer nonsense. We all understand it’s just ridiculous. A pipeline? It’s equally absurd.”