Russian President Vladimir Putin didn’t set an alarm to wake up in the middle of the night to watch Thursday’s debate between President Biden and former President Trump.
“You don’t expect the Russian president to set his alarm and get up early in the morning to watch the US debate?” Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said. According to Reuters.
The debate began at 9pm in Atlanta and around 4am in Moscow.
Peskov insisted Putin was indifferent to the outcome of the November election, despite his close ties to the Republican front-runner.
“There are a lot of issues that are really important to our country and that concern us. These are issues that the president is working on,” he said. “The debate in the United States is not part of the main issues on the agenda.”
During Thursday’s debate, Trump criticized Biden on foreign policy, pointing to Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Mr Trump has in the past praised Mr Putin as “very shrewd” and “intelligent” and has been criticised for suggesting Russia could “do whatever it wants” if Nato member states failed to meet minimum defence spending targets.
In the first presidential debate of the season, Trump singled out Putin’s conditions for ending the conflict in Ukraine, calling them “unacceptable,” but he also avoided explaining how he would end the war, a pledge he made during the campaign, if re-elected.
Biden’s early stumbles over his answers defined the debate’s storyline, the first time the candidates faced off face-to-face since 2020, and sounded a warning to many Democrats worried about whether he can beat Trump in the polls this fall.
Putin said earlier this year that he would prefer Biden to remain in office rather than Trump being re-elected because the incumbent is “more predictable.”
Biden has spent much of his time in office building a relationship with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and supporting Ukraine’s efforts to end aggression from Moscow.
Politico noted Russian state news agencies widely carried polls showing Americans believed Trump won the debate.
