MOSCOW (Reuters) – The Kremlin said on Friday that the whole world had paid attention to U.S. President Joe Biden’s slips of the tongue at a NATO summit a day earlier, but said it was for U.S. voters, not Russia, to determine the U.S. presidential candidates’ prospects.
The Kremlin was commenting after Biden misspoke and incorrectly introduced Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy as Russian President Vladimir Putin before correcting himself.
In another slip, Biden also wrongly called his Republican rival Donald Trump his vice-president, who is Kamala Harris.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that Moscow had noted Biden’s slips along with the rest of the world but said: “It’s not our topic. It’s a topic for the U.S. Let American voters determine the chances of the (presidential) candidates.”
Peskov said however that the Kremlin had taken note of what it called disrespectful comments Biden had made about Putin.
“For us this was unacceptable. It (such behaviour) does not make an American head of state look good,” said Peskov.
Biden said he had made the slip over Zelenskiy’s name because he was “so focused on beating Putin”.
(Reporting by Dmitry Antonov; Writing by Andrew Osborn; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)
