Putin chafes at US, criticizes response to Capitol attack

By VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV

Associated Press

MOSCOW — Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday set a tough tone for his upcoming summit with U.S. President Joe Biden, accusing Washington of trying to contain Russia and citing its response to the deadly Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol as a manifestation of the West's double standards.

Speaking at an economic forum in St. Petersburg, Putin said that arms control, global conflicts, the coronavirus pandemic and climate change are among the issues he and Biden would discuss at their June 16 summit in Geneva.

“We need to find ways of looking for a settlement in our relations, which are at an extremely low level now,” Putin said.

“We don’t have any issues with the U.S.,” he continued. “But it has an issue with us. It wants to contain our development and publicly talks about it. Economic restrictions and attempts to influence our country’s domestic politics, relying on forces they consider their allies inside Russia, stem from that.”

He voiced hope that the meeting will help ease tensions with Washington. Russia-U.S. ties have sunk to post-Cold War lows over Moscow’s 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula, accusations of Russian interference in elections in the U.S. and other Western nations, and cyberattacks that U.S. officials allege had Russian origins.

Putin reiterated that Russia rejects accusations of interfering in U.S. presidential elections, and he spoke critically of the U.S. response to the Capitol attack, which took place as Congress prepared to certify that Biden had defeated then President Donald Trump in the November election.

“They weren’t just a crowd of robbers and rioters. Those people had come with political demands,” he said.

Putin pointed out that the heavy charges against hundreds of participants in the attack were filed even as the U.S. and its allies strongly criticized Belarus’ crackdown on anti-government protests. And he charged that even as the West has criticized Russian authorities for a harsh response to anti-Kremlin demonstrations, protesters in Europe have faced an even tougher police response, with some shot in the eye by what he mockingly called “democratic rubber bullets.”

In separate comments to Russia's Channel 1 state television, Putin added that he doesn't expect any breakthroughs from the summit with Biden, but added that he hopes that it will help “create conditions for taking further steps to normalize Russian-U.S. relations.”

He praised Biden as a “very experienced statesman who has been involved in politics for his entire life ... and a very prudent and careful person. I do hope that our meeting will be positive," Putin said.

He also took time to scathingly deride the allegations of Russian hackers’ involvement on a U.S. pipeline and a meat plant that have clouded the atmosphere before the summit.

“I do hope that people would realize that there hasn’t been any malicious Russian activity whatsoever,” he said. “I heard something about the meat plant. — It's sheer nonsense. We all understand it's just ridiculous. A pipeline? It's equally absurd.”

Putin said "the U.S. special services should track down those ransom seekers. It's certainly not Russia that would extort money from some company. We don't deal with chicken or beef, it's plain ridiculous.”

He alleged the hacking accusations were aired by those who try to “provoke new conflicts before our meeting with Biden,” and added on a positive note that some in the U.S. doubted Russian involvement in the hacks.

“It means that inside the American society, media and political class there are people who want to find ways to repair U.S.-Russian relations,” he said.

On other issues, Putin praised his country's response to the COVID-19 pandemic and called for a stronger worldwide response to global warming as he sought to bolster Russia's international standing.

Addressing the forum, Putin lauded the efficiency of Russian-designed vaccines and bemoaned what he described as “politically motivated bans” on their purchase in some countries.

Last year, Russia boasted of being the first in the world to authorize a coronavirus vaccine but it has since moved slowly in giving shots to its population. The slack pace of vaccination has been partly attributed to public skepticism about the vaccines amid controversial signals from the authorities.

Experts have questioned whether Russia will be able to meet the government target of vaccinating more than 30 million of the country’s 146 million people by mid-June, and nearly 69 million by August.

Putin again urged the Russians to move quickly to get the shots, and he invited foreigners to Russia to get vaccinated, saying he would instruct the government to facilitate that.

He also emphasized the need to strengthen the international response to climate change, noting that melting permafrost has mounted a major challenge to Russia's Arctic regions.

“We have entire cities built on permafrost,” he said. “What will happen if it all starts melting?”

Putin said laying the pipes for the first of two lines of the prospective Nord Stream 2 pipeline to Germany has been completed, leaving only welding to finalize its construction. He said the second line will follow suit soon.

The U.S. has strongly opposed construction of the Russian pipeline, but the Biden administration opted last month not to punish the German company overseeing the project — while announcing new sanctions against Russian companies and ships. The Kremlin has hailed it as a “positive signal” before the Putin-Biden summit.

The Russian leader hailed the project as more economically feasible compared with an existing pipeline via Ukraine, rejecting Ukrainian and Western criticism that it's designed to rob Kyiv of transit fees.

Putin said Russia will continue pumping via Ukraine 40 billion cubic meters of gas a year in line with an existing five-year contract, and could continue doing so after it expires if Ukraine shows “goodwill.”

Russia and Ukraine have been locked in a tense tug-of-war following Moscow's 2014 annexation of the Crimean Peninsula and its support for separatist insurgents in eastern Ukraine.

Putin deplored what he described as the U.S. use of the dollar as a political weapon, saying that “its use as an instrument of competition and political struggle has hurt its role as the world reserve currency.”

Russia said Thursday it will completely remove the U.S. dollar from its National Wealth Fund and turn the dollar-denominated assets into euros, yuan and gold. Russia long has moved to reduce the dollar’s share in its hard currency reserves as it has faced U.S. sanctions amid tensions with Washington and its allies.