Joe Biden has shown that he is “a pro-Russian candidate controlled by the Kremlin,” joked the Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman after the US president slipped up and introduced the Ukrainian leader as “President Putin” before correcting himself.
A video of the breakdown at a NATO summit in Washington on Thursday was featured prominently in news broadcasts in Russia, where state television commentators have long portrayed the 81-year-old Biden as a senile old man in danger of stumbling into World War III, while they portray the 71-year-old Putin as a strategic genius.
Biden’s confusion of the names of his Republican rival Donald Trump with that of his Vice President Kamala Harris also made headlines.
Olga Skabeeva, a pro-Kremlin television commentator, posted a clip of Biden’s slip of the tongue to use Putin’s name on her social media feed, along with a crying-with-laughter emoji.
“Joe’s show goes on!” she wrote separately under footage of Trump and Harris confusing their names.
Biden’s gaffes come as he faces calls from some Democrats to abandon his re-election bid. The president has insisted he remains in the race and has the best chance of beating Trump in November’s election.
The Kremlin said Biden’s mistakes had been widely noticed.
“We noticed that the whole world was paying attention to what was happening… It is clear that these were slips of the tongue,” said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov.
He said Biden’s slip-ups were “an internal US issue,” but the Kremlin had also taken note of his disrespectful comments about Putin, whom the US president called “a murderous madman.”
“This is unacceptable to us and we do not believe that it puts an American head of state in any good light,” Peskov said.
But it was Biden’s verbal slip-ups that dominated media coverage and commentary in Russia.
Sergei Markov, a former Kremlin adviser, said anyone can make mistakes, but Biden seems to make one every day because he is “backward.”
Maria Zakharova, the senior spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, published a sarcastic commentary exploiting Biden’s mistake of introducing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as “President Putin” to mock what Moscow sees as false US accusations of interference in US politics.
“It seems to me that the notorious ‘Russian interference in the American elections’ can no longer be hidden – there is a pro-Russian candidate (Biden) who is controlled by the ‘hand of the Kremlin,'” Zakharova joked on her official Telegram account.
Later, in an official press conference, Zakharova accused the US “deep state” as well as politicians and the media of covering up Biden’s true condition for years, in the same way that she claimed they had covered up Washington’s activities in Ukraine.
She said Biden’s performances and the public reaction of his top advisers meant it was no longer possible to keep up appearances.
“The question is: Is this same Biden signing all these checks (for Ukraine)?” she said.
“The same Biden who doesn’t know what country he’s talking about. And he’s the one signing checks for billions of dollars? Of course you can give him any piece of paper to sign.”
Hawkish Russian foreign policy commentators said Biden’s slip-ups were further evidence of his declining mental faculties, and some expressed concern that the world’s most powerful military force was being led by someone whose cognitive abilities appeared to be declining.
The Kremlin is watching the US election closely.
Relations between the United States and Russia sank to their lowest level since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis after Moscow sent tens of thousands of troops to Ukraine in 2022 as part of a so-called “special military operation” that it said was intended to safeguard national security.
Washington is Ukraine’s biggest sponsor and Moscow has signaled in recent weeks that it is open to an agreement to end the war, albeit under maximum conditions that Kiev dismisses as tantamount to surrender.
Although Putin has stated that the outcome of the US presidential election is unlikely to change anything for Russia, he has shown public interest in Trump’s alleged ideas for ending the conflict.