Putin: I saw bits of the debate, but I still back Biden to win

Russian President said he did not take lightly Donald Trump’s claim he could quickly bring the war in Ukraine to a close.

Vladimir Putin faces the Russian media after the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation summit in Astana on Thursday. Picture: AFP

Vladimir Putin has said he watched parts of the first televised US presidential debate of the election campaign but is still backing Joe Biden to win in November, despite the President’s error-strewn performance.

Asked by a state television reporter whether Mr Biden or Donald Trump had performed better, and if his publicly stated preference for a Biden victory had changed, Putin said: “Nothing has changed.”

The Russian President added: “Did we not know what could come? We knew.” Asked how much of the debate he watched, Putin said: “I saw some fragments – but I have enough to do.”

Putin said he had paid little attention to the criticism of Mr Biden’s performance in the US, adding that he did not take lightly Mr Trump’s claim that he could quickly bring the war in Ukraine to a close.

“The fact that Mr Trump as a presidential candidate is saying that he is ready and wants to stop the war in Ukraine, we take that quite seriously,” Putin said at a press conference at the summit of the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation in Astana, Kazakhstan.

Putin, whose use of the word “war” was unusual – the Kremlin prefers the euphemism “special military operation” – added he was “not familiar” with Mr Trump’s specific proposals to cease hostilities. “That, of course, is the key question,” he said.

In May last year, Mr Trump said: “They’re dying, Russians and Ukrainians. I want them to stop dying. And I’ll have that done – I’ll have that done in 24 hours.”

During his debate with Mr Biden last week, Mr Trump also said: “If we had a real president, a president that knew, that was respected by Putin … he would have never invaded Ukraine.”

However, Vassily Nebenzia, Russia’s ambassador to the UN, told reporters on Monday “the Ukrainian crisis cannot be solved in one day”.

President Volodymyr Zelensky, meanwhile, challenged Mr Trump to reveal his master plan for ending the fighting, saying in an interview with the Bloomberg news agency in Kyiv: “If Trump knows how to finish this war, he should tell us today. If there are risks to Ukrainian independence, if we lose statehood, we want to be ready for this, we want to know.”

Putin said dialogue with Washington would be possible only after November’s election, adding: “We have to wait.” He claimed the Kremlin was willing to discuss arms treaties with the US but “goodwill” was needed.

His remarks came after he and President Xi Jinping hailed the growing political, economic and security alliance between Russia and China, which Putin said was at the forefront of a “fair world order” that would counter the West.

“The multipolar world has become reality,” said Putin. “More and more countries support a fair world order and are ready to vigorously defend their legal rights and traditional values.”

Mr Xi warned of the West’s “Cold War mentality” and said: “SCO members should consolidate unity and jointly oppose external interference in the face of the real challenges of interference and division.”

Putin said last month that a new Eurasian security pact should strive to remove all external military presence from the region, which is dominated by Russia and China. Moscow and Beijing are striving to exert influence in central Asia, a strategically important area rich in hydrocarbons and other resources, which both countries regard as their backyard.

Although Belarus, Russia’s neighbour and ally, joined the SCO on Thursday, several members of the group had not given overt support for Putin’s war in Ukraine, despite his overtures. Kazakhstan, China and India voted in favour of a UN resolution in May last year that referred to Russia’s “aggression” against Georgia and Ukraine.

Putin claimed Ukraine had rejected nascent agreements with Russia over a peace settlement, discussed in Istanbul in 2022, “on direct orders from London”. Former UK prime minister Boris Johnson called the accusation “total nonsense”.

THE TIMES