Moscow has accused Joe Biden of hurling ‘personal insults’ at Vladimir Putin fueled by ‘irritation, fatigue, and forgetfulness,’ after the President called the Russian leader a ‘murderous dictator’ and a ‘thug’ over his brutal invasion of Ukraine.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov also accused Ukraine of trying to drag out peace talks, saying that Russia’s delegation was showing readiness to work faster than the Ukrainian side.
Biden has aimed several attacks on the Russian leader in recent days, after the Russian leader last month sent tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine.
Putin has called the invasion a ‘special operation’ to degrade its military capabilities and root out people he called dangerous nationalists, with Moscow insisting it was not targeting civilian sites. Reports, photographs, and videos prove otherwise.
‘We hear and see statements that are actually personal insults to President Putin,’ Peskov told reporters.
‘Given such irritability from Mr. Biden, his fatigue and sometimes forgetfulness… fatigue that leads to aggressive statements, we will not make harsh assessments, so as not to cause more aggression.’
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov also railed against the United States on Friday, accusing the country of acting like a ‘global sheriff’.
Lavrov said Russia has lost all illusions about relying on the West and Moscow will never accept a view of the world dominated by a United States.
In the same speech, Lavrov also threatened countries sending arms to Ukraine, saying Russia could consider all transporters brining weapons military targets.
Western nations have imposed sweeping sanctions across Russia’s financial and corporate sectors in response to the invasion, plunging Russia’s economy into its gravest crisis since the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union.
Lavrov, President Vladimir Putin’s foreign minister since 2004, said the West’s reaction to what Moscow has called a ‘special military operation’ had illustrated that the West was completely dominated by the United States and that the European Union was largely powerless.
‘If there was any illusion that we could one day rely on our Western partners, this illusion is no longer there,’ Lavrov told Russian state-funded RT in English.
Russia would look eastwards, he said.
‘What the Americans want is a unipolar world which would not be like a global village but like an American village – or maybe like a saloon where you know the strongest calls the shots,’ Lavrov said.
He added that many countries such as China, India and Brazil did not want to be ordered around by ‘Uncle Sam’ acting like a sheriff.
