Putin congratulates Biden, states he is “ready for collaboration and contacts”

Moscow — Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday congratulated Joe Biden on winning the U.S. presidential election in November, stating he hoped the international locations could set apart their dissimilarities to promote world wide security. Putin wished the U.S. president-elect each individual success and reported that, “for my part, I am ready for collaboration and contacts with you,” in accordance to a Kremlin assertion.

The Russian president was 1 of the final remaining leaders of main planet countries to have held back on congratulating Mr. Biden, who was confirmed as the future U.S. president by the Electoral College on Monday.

Officials in Moscow, which include the country’s elections main and international minister, experienced earlier criticized the U.S. elections procedure, describing it as archaic and not representative of the will of the persons.

In his congratulatory telegram to Mr. Biden, Putin claimed that their international locations “bear unique obligation for worldwide stability and steadiness.”

He stated he was confident that Russia and the United States could, “even with their dissimilarities, seriously add to solving lots of troubles and troubles that the world is at this time experiencing.”

Mr. Biden is envisioned to get a more durable stand versus Russia than outgoing President Donald Trump, who he slammed during the marketing campaign for having “embraced so a lot of autocrats all over the environment, starting off with Vladimir Putin.”

Russia was accused of interfering in the 2016 U.S. election to assist get Mr. Trump elected, in the hope he would consider a softer line with Moscow. In August, the U.S. intelligence community warned that Russia was once more actively trying to get to meddle in America’s democratic approach.

An intelligence assessment observed that Moscow was seeking to “denigrate” Mr. Biden, then the presumptive Democratic nominee, and that some actors connected to the Kremlin had been striving to enhance President Trump’s candidacy ahead of the 2020 election.  

Moscow has normally rejected allegations of interference in any other country’s politics.

Russia also denied on Monday new accusations that it was driving a considerable hack into servers at many U.S. govt companies, together with the Treasury and Commerce departments.