Russian President Vladimir Putin has said he would prefer incumbent Joe Biden to win in a possible contest with Republican frontrunner Donald Trump in November’s US presidential elections.
In an interview with Russian state TV journalist Pavel Zarubin published on the Kremlin’s Telegram channel, Putin said Biden is “more experienced and more predictable” than former president Donald Trump, who is currently leading the race to be the Republican candidate.
“He is an ‘old school’ politician,” Putin said of Biden.
“But we will work with any US leader, elected by the people of America,” he added.
When asked about the advanced age of President Biden at 82, Putin brushed aside the question.
“I’m not a doctor and I don’t consider it proper to comment on that,” he replied.
He then suggested that President Biden was in good health when both heads of state met in Geneva in 2021. “They talked about him being incapacitated, but I saw nothing of the kind,” Putin said.
Recent polls suggest the American public are worried about the age of President Biden, who, if re-elected, would be 87 by the time his second term ended.
It is the first time the Russian President publicly speaks about the upcoming presidential vote in the US.
It comes days after Donald Trump suggested at a South Carolina rally that he would “encourage” Russia to attack any NATO country that does not contribute 2% of its GDP to the military alliance’s coffers.
His comments, coupled with his questioning of US funding for Kyiv, have raised fears in Europe that a second Trump term could significantly upend the West’s unified stance on the conflict in Ukraine and thus play into Putin’s hands.
President Biden said on Tuesday that Trump had “bowed down to a Russian dictator”, while NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg warned Wednesday that his alliance’s deterrence credibility should not be “undermined”.
In the interview, Putin also criticised Biden’s Ukraine’s policy. The US president has consistently vowed to stand by Kyiv “as long as it takes,” and is pushing the lower chamber of the Congress to approve a stalled package of aid to the war-torn country worth $60 billion (€56 billion).
“I believe that the position of the current administration is badly flawed and wrong, and I have told President Biden about that,” Putin said.
In a recent interview with former Fox news host Tucker Carlson, Putin claimed his military operation in Ukraine aimed to protect Russia’s security interests from NATO’s eastward expansion.
He told journalist Pavel Zarubin Wednesday that he had expected more from his interview with Carlson, saying the American did not ask the tough questions he had anticipated.
