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LONDON: Russian President Vladimir Putin stated in an interview broadcast on Wednesday (Feb 14) that he most popular Joe Biden to Donald Trump however was prepared to work with any US president.
Putin was requested by interviewer Pavel Zarubin who was “higher for us” out of Biden, a Democrat, and Trump, a Republican.
Putin replied with out hesitation: “Biden. He’s a extra skilled, predictable particular person, a politician of the old-fashioned.”
Smiling barely, he added: “However we’ll work with any US president who the American individuals believe in.”
It was the primary time Putin had publicly commented on the 2024 US presidential election race through which Biden and Trump are expected to face each other for the second successive time.
At a time of excessive political uncertainty within the US, and with relations between the 2 international locations at their lowest level for greater than 60 years, his feedback have been extra prone to be perceived as mischief-making than taken at face worth.
Biden has led the Western response to Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, together with the growth of the NATO alliance, the imposition of successive waves of sanctions on Moscow and the availability of billions of {dollars}’ value of support and weapons to Kyiv.
Primarily based on Trump’s reluctance to criticise Putin in his first time period and his newer feedback – together with a weekend interview the place he stated he would encourage Russia to assault NATO members that did not spend sufficient on their very own defence – his many critics consider he would give the Kremlin chief a a lot simpler journey.
Putin allowed himself to opine on the 2 candidates, and even to debate the delicate difficulty of Biden’s mental fitness, regardless of saying it could be mistaken to intervene within the marketing campaign.
“After I met with Biden in Switzerland – true, that was a number of years, three years in the past – individuals have been already saying he wasn’t as much as it. I did not see something of the sort,” Putin stated.
Whereas showing to defend Biden, he introduced up an episode that embarrassed the US chief, when he banged his head whereas getting out of a helicopter in June final yr.
“Nicely, which of us hasn’t banged his head someplace?” Putin stated.
Trump, he stated, “has been known as a non-systemic politician; he has his personal view on the subject of how america ought to develop relations with its allies”.
Putin has been in energy as president or prime minister since 1999, however at 71, he’s a decade youthful than Biden and 6 years youthful than Trump.
He’s certain to win a new six-year term in an election subsequent month, from which two candidates who opposed the battle in Ukraine have been disqualified for presenting invalid documentation.
In 2020, a report by the US Senate intelligence committee discovered Russia had tried to affect the 2016 US presidential election as a way to assist Trump, who defeated Hillary Clinton.
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