Putin’s Response to Biden Shows Kremlin Leader's Inadequacy, Inozemtsev Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, March 19 – Vladimir Putin’s response to US President Joe Biden’s agreeing that the Kremlin leader is a murderer – the childish refrain that “it takes one to know one” – shows that the Kremlin leader doesn't have the personal resources needed to deal with a deterioration of East-West relations at this level, Vladislav Inozemtsev says.

            Biden’s words are a clear indication that the US now views Russia as incorrigible and its current leader as some with whom one cannot cooperate in a normal way, the Russian economist and commentator says (currenttime.tv/a/messedzh-ochen-chetkiy-no-moskve-otvetit-absolyutno-nechem-kak-chitat-dialog-baydena-i-putina/31158346.html).

            Biden’s words are at odds with his actions up to now, but they are a sign that relations between Washington and Moscow aren’t going to be improved unless and until Russia changes direction. For the time being at least, Inozemtsev continues, the US isn’t going to make any moves on its own toward a warming of relations.

            Now, he suggests, the US has sent “a very clear message.” We don’t know how to speak with you and “generally speaking there aren’t any particular issues for us to have conversations and interactions.” If such emerge, Washington could change but it is difficult to see what those might be in the short term. And the Kremlin has thus been put on notice.

           "From the point of rhetoric, Biden’s statement and Putin’s are very different things,” and it is that which matters, Inozemtsev says. The first is the remark, however undiplomatic, of a statesman; the second that of someone who by the accident of fate occupies the position of a president but lacks the qualities to be able to respond appropriately.