Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that Joe Biden presidency would be better for Russia than a Donald Trump one. His reason: "Because he is a more experienced person, he is predictable, he is a politician of an old formation."
Putin made this interesting remark during an pro-Kremlin journalist Pavel Zarubin in an on-camera interview held on Wednesday. However, Russia wouldn't mind working with any US that has the trust of Americans, the Russian President added.
But, the current US adminsitration's position with regard of Russias war on Ukraine was "extremely harmful and erroneous," Putin said, adding that the war could have been over over "a year and a half ago if agreements during a meeting in Istanbul in March 2022 were kept."
Putin said he doesn't think Biden is senile, adding that they last met in 2021. "Even then [three years ago] people were saying that he was incompetent, but I did not see anything of this sort," he said. "Yes, he kept looking at his papers, but to be honest I kept doing the same. So there was nothing peculiar. So he banged his head on the helicopter when he was getting out of it — who of us hasn’t banged their head on something?" Putin said.
With regard to the Ukraine war, Putin said he regretted that he didn’t start active actions in Ukraine earlier than February 2022. He also accused the Western leaders of lying to Russia about "not expanding NATO to the East."
"We were and are concerned about the possibility of Ukraine being drawn into NATO, since this threatens our security," Putin said. He alleged that the Minsk agreements, a ceasefire protocol signed by Ukraine and Russia in 2015, was never meant to be kept but used to buy time to load Ukraine with additional weapons.
However, in a surprise remark, Putin said he wasn't impressed with Tucker Carlson's interview. "I honestly thought he would be aggressive and ask tough questions. I wasn’t only ready for that, I wanted that, because it would give me the opportunity to give tough answers back," Putin said."To be frank, I didn’t fully enjoy that interview," he said.
On Trump's statement that he would encourage Russia to do whatever it wants to NATO allies who doesn't pay, Putin said there "was probably some logic in his point of view".
"There is no logic from the Europeans’ point of view — they want the US to keep carrying out some functions for free, as they have done since Nato was founded. If the US think they don’t need [Nato] anymore, then that’s their decision," Putin added, saying that Trump "had his own views on how US relations with their allies should develop".
