Russian President Vladimir Putin gave a sarcastic response on Thursday when asked to comment on U.S. counterpart Joe Biden calling him a “crazy SOB.”
The Kremlin leader, who endorsed Biden over rival Donald Trump in the upcoming U.S. elections, joked: “He can’t of course say to me: Volodya, well done, thank you [for the endorsement], you’ve helped me a lot?”
Biden made the comments at a speech in San Francisco in which he compared the global risks posed by Putin to the threat of climate change.
Earlier Thursday, the Kremlin called Biden’s comments a “huge disgrace.”
“This is a huge disgrace for the country… for the United States. If a president uses that kind of language, he should be ashamed,” Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
“It’s clear that Mr. Biden is behaving like a Hollywood cowboy to score domestic political points,” he continued.
Biden has a history of similar hot-mic comments and has been strongly critical of Putin before, announcing in 2022 that the Russian leader “cannot remain in power.”
His remarks come as relations with the Kremlin linger at historic lows over the invasion of Ukraine, and more recently, the death of Russian opposition activist Alexei Navalny.
Biden has promised to introduce tough new sanctions against Moscow over Navalny’s death, which the White House has blamed on the Kremlin.