MOSCOW: The Kremlin said on Thursday that Joe Biden humiliated the United States by calling Russian President Vladimir Putin a “crazy SOB”, casting the US president’s remark as part of a botched “Hollywood cowboy” act.
The US president made the “crazy SOB” remark as part of a sentence about threats to the world – including “that guy Putin and others”, the risk of nuclear conflict and the existential threat to humanity from climate change.
“The use of such language against the head of another state by the president of the United States is unlikely to violate the rights of our president, President Putin,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Reuters. “But it demeans those who use such a vocabulary.
Peskov said the remark was “probably some attempt to look like a Hollywood cowboy. But I honestly don’t think it’s possible.”
“Has Mr. Putin ever used one rude word to address you? That has never happened. That’s why I think such a vocabulary humiliates America itself,” Peskov said, adding that such language is a shame for the United States.
Others were less reticent.
Putin ally Dmitry Medvedev, who was president from 2008-2012, said the existential threat to the world comes from “useless old bastards like Biden himself.” Medvedev said Biden is “senile” and “ready to start a war with Russia.”
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that the next time Biden uses the phrase “crazy son of a bitch,” he “should try to remember that Americans best associate it with his own offspring, Hunter Biden.”
Russian newspaper Moskovsky Komsomolets said “Biden insulted Putin,” while Sergei Markov, a former Kremlin adviser, said Biden’s remark showed the West was stepping up its attempt to demonize Putin ahead of the March election.
Relationships in crisis
The war in Ukraine, the death of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny and US claims that Russia plans to put a nuclear weapon in space have led to the biggest crisis in relations between Russia and the West since the Cold War.
Top Russian and American diplomats say they cannot remember a time when relations between the world’s two biggest nuclear powers have been worse, including the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.
Biden said last week, after prison guards announced Navalny’s death in a Russian penal colony, that it was “the result of something Putin and his thugs did.” Navalny has previously accused Putin of trying to kill him, which the Kremlin has denied.
Russian officials say the West rushed to accuse Putin without waiting for evidence. The Kremlin says the West’s response to Navalny’s death is unacceptable and unjustified.
In a speech in Warsaw in 2022, Biden said Putin “cannot stay in power.” The White House downplayed the remark, while hardliners in Russia saw it as evidence that the US wanted to topple Putin.
In 2021, Biden said he considered Putin a murderer. Putin said Biden called him later to explain why he used those words.
