Putin finally congratulates Joe Biden on his election victory and says he is ‘ready for interaction’ with the president-elect after the Kremlin said he would wait for the official result
- Putin was one of the last world leaders who had not acknowledged Biden’s win
- He finally congratulated Biden after the electoral college confirmed the results
- The Kremlin said the Russian leader ‘wished the president-elect every success’
Russian president Vladimir Putin finally congratulated Joe Biden on his US election victory today, hours after America’s electoral college rubber-stamped the results.
Putin was one of the last world leaders who had not acknowledged Biden’s victory, with the Kremlin saying it would wait for the official results of the election.
But after Monday’s procedures which confirmed Biden as the winner by 306 electoral votes to 232 over Donald Trump, Putin ‘wished the president-elect every success’ and said he was ‘ready for interaction and contact’ with Biden.
Putin also ‘expressed confidence that Russia and the United States, which have a special responsibility for global security and stability, could, despite their differences, really help to solve the many problems and challenges facing the world’.
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday congratulated Joe Biden on his victory in the U.S. presidential election
Putin had appeared to hedge his bets in the run-up to the election, accusing Biden of ‘sharp anti-Russian rhetoric’ but welcoming his calls for nuclear arms control.
The Russian leader had also defended Hunter Biden, the president-elect’s son, against criticism from Trump over his business ties in Russia and Ukraine.
Most world leaders congratulated Biden after he was projected as the winner on November 7, four days after the election, but Putin was conspicuously silent.
On Monday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov had said it was ‘appropriate to wait for the official vote count’ before congratulating Biden.
Asked why in 2016 Putin had congratulated Trump almost immediately after his election victory over Hillary Clinton, Peskov said there was an obvious difference this time round.
‘You can see that there are certain legal procedures that have been announced by the current president. That is why the situations are different and we therefore think it appropriate to wait for an official announcement,’ said Peskov.
Trump has launched a barrage of lawsuits and made a series of unfounded claims of election fraud, but none of these efforts have succeeded in halting the march towards Biden’s inauguration on January 20.
On Monday, the 538 members of the electoral college who formally choose the president met in their respective states and confirmed Biden as the winner.
Joe Biden gives another victory speech on Monday night after the electoral college confirmed him as the president-elect
Donald Trump, pictured at the White House on Saturday, has made a series of unfounded claims of election fraud but none of these have succeeded in overturning the results
Peskov said Putin had repeatedly indicated he was ready to work with any US president.
He added that Russia hoped it could establish dialogue with a new US administration and find a way to normalise troubled bilateral relations.
‘President Putin has repeatedly said he will show respect for whatever choice the American people makes,’ Peskov said.
While Biden was vice president under Barack Obama, Moscow’s ties with Washington sank to post-Cold War lows when Russia annexed Crimea in 2014.
Relations soured further over US allegations that Moscow had meddled in the 2016 election to try to tilt the vote in Trump’s favour, something the Kremlin denied.
Trump himself has played down the findings by US intelligence, and tried to drum up evidence for a counter-claim that Ukraine had tried to help Clinton.
Trump’s ties to Russia were the subject of the two-year Mueller investigation, which neither accused him of collusion nor cleared him of obstruction of justice.
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