Russia’s Vladimir Putin says he prefers Joe Biden to Donald Trump
Russian President Vladimir Putin said in an interview broadcast Wednesday that he prefers Joe Biden to Donald Trump but is willing to work with any US president.
Interviewer Pavel Zarubin asked Putin who was “better for us” between Biden, a Democrat, and Trump, a Republican.
Putin replied without hesitation: “Biden. He is a more experienced, predictable person, a politician of the old school.”
Smiling slightly, he added: “But we will work with any American president in whom the American people have confidence.”
It was the first time Putin had publicly commented on the 2024 US election race in which Biden and Trump are expected to face each other for the second consecutive time.
At a time of high political uncertainty in the US, and with relations between the two countries at their lowest level in more than 60 years, his comments were more likely to be considered mischievous than taken at face value.
Biden has led the Western response to Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, including expanding the NATO alliance, imposing successive waves of sanctions on Moscow and providing billions of dollars in aid and arms to Kiev.
Based on Trump’s reluctance to criticize Putin in his first term and his recent comments – including a weekend interview where he said he would encourage Russia to attack NATO members that spend substantially on their defense Failed to do so – many of his critics believed he would. The path to a Kremlin leader is very easy.
Despite saying it would be wrong to interfere in the campaign, Putin allowed himself to have opinions on both candidates and even discuss the sensitive issue of Biden’s mental fitness.
Putin said, “When I met Biden in Switzerland – true, that was several years, three years ago – people were already saying that he was not capable of this. I didn’t see anything like that.”
Defending Biden, he brought up an episode that embarrassed the US leader when he hit his head while exiting a helicopter in June last year.
“Well, who among us hasn’t hit our head somewhere?” Putin said.
Trump, he said, has been called “a non-systemic politician; he has his own perspective on how the United States should develop relations with its allies.”
Putin has been in power as president or prime minister since 1999, but at 71 he is a decade younger than Biden and six years younger than Trump. He is certain to win a new six-year term in elections next month, in which two candidates who opposed the war in Ukraine were disqualified for presenting invalid documents.
In 2020, a report by the US Senate Intelligence Committee found that Russia had tried to influence the 2016 US presidential election to help Trump, who defeated Hillary Clinton.