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MOSCOW (Reuters) – President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that he and U.S. President Joe Biden should hold live conversations online in the coming days after Biden said he thought the Russian leader was a murderer and that diplomatic relations sank to a new post-Cold War low.
Putin, speaking on television, quoted a chant from a Russian playground to scathingly respond to Biden’s accusation with the comment that “whoever said it did it.”
In an ABC News interview aired Wednesday that prompted Russia to call its ambassador in Washington for consultations, Biden said “I do” when asked if he believed Putin was a murderer.
Biden was quick to extend a nuclear weapons pact with Russia after he took office. But his administration has said it will take a tougher line with Moscow than Washington took under Donald Trump, and will commit only when there is tangible benefit to the United States.
Putin said that he had last spoken to Biden by phone at the request of the US president and that he has now proposed that they have another conversation, on Friday or Monday, which would take place via video link and broadcast live.
“I want to offer President Biden that we continue our discussion, but on the condition that we do so live, online, without delay,” Putin said, when asked in a television interview about Biden’s comments. The two leaders last spoke by phone on January 26, days after Biden took office.
White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said Thursday that Biden has no regrets calling Putin a murderer and declined a question about Putin’s request for an immediate public call.
“I would say that the president has already had a conversation with President Putin, even when there are more world leaders that he has not yet engaged with,” Psaki said. “The president, of course, will be in Georgia tomorrow and he will be quite busy.”
Putin said he was ready to discuss Russia’s relations with the United States and other issues such as regional conflicts “tomorrow or, say, Monday,” adding that he would have a weekend break in a remote part of Russia.
‘WE’RE DIFFERENT’
In his ABC comments, Biden also described Putin as soulless and said he would pay a price for alleged Russian meddling in the November 2020 US presidential election, something the Kremlin denies.
Russia is preparing to be hit by a new round of US sanctions in the coming days over US accusations of election interference and piracy.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Thursday that Washington was tracking efforts to complete Russia’s Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline and evaluating information on entities that appear to be involved.
In a very unusual move after Biden’s interview, Moscow called its ambassador to the United States for consultations.
Suggesting that Biden was hypocritical in his comments, Putin said that all states had to deal with “bloody events” and added that Biden was accusing the Russian leader of something of which he himself was guilty.
“I remember in my childhood, when we argued in the yard, we used to say: whoever said it, did it. And that’s not a coincidence, it’s not just a saying or a children’s joke. The psychological meaning here is very deep. Putin said.
“We always see our own traits in other people and think that they are who we really are. And as a result, we evaluate (a person’s) activities and give evaluations,” he said.
Putin then spoke about American history, talking about what he called the genocide of Native Americans, slavery and mistreatment of blacks, and the dropping of atomic bombs on Japan at the end of World War II.
“They think we are like them, but we are different, we have a different genetic and cultural-moral code,” Putin said.
“We will work with them in the areas that we are interested in on terms that we consider to our advantage. They will have to deal with that regardless of all their attempts to stop our development, regardless of sanctions and insults.” “.
(Reporting by Andrew Osborn, Tom Balmforth, Anton Kolodyazhnyy, Dmitry Antonov, Andrey Ostroukh; Edited by Frances Kerry and Grant McCool)
