Biden says Putin ‘will pay a price’ for Russian efforts to undermine the 2020 US elections

Biden says Putin ‘will pay a price’ for Russian efforts to undermine the 2020 US elections

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“He’s going to pay a price,” Biden said of Putin in an interview that aired on Wednesday on ABC’s “Good Morning America” ​​show. “We had a long conversation, he and I, and relatively well. And the conversation started – ‘I know you and you know me. If I establish that this has happened, be prepared.'”

Biden made his first call with Putin in late January. The White House said at the time that Biden confronted the Russian president on a number of issues, including Moscow’s interference in the 2020 presidential election in the United States, the massive cyber attack Solarwinds, the suspected poisoning of Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny and reports of Russian rewards to American troops serving in Afghanistan.

The president gave no further details to ABC about the “price” Putin will pay, but the Biden government is expected to announce sanctions related to electoral interference next week, three US State Department officials told CNN. The authorities have not released any details related to the expected sanctions, but said they will target several countries, including Russia, China and Iran.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence released an assessment on Tuesday about foreign threats to the 2020 federal elections in the U.S. The assessment concluded that Russia has made efforts to “denigrate the candidacy of President Biden and the Democratic Party, supporting former President Trump, undermining public confidence in the electoral process and exacerbating socio-political divisions in the USA.:
The report is the most comprehensive assessment of external threats to the 2020 elections to date, detailing extensive influence operations by U.S. opponents who have sought to undermine confidence in the democratic process, as well as targeting specific presidential candidates.
It also confirms what was widely assumed, and almost hidden, last year: former President Donald Trump and his closest allies publicly embraced Russia’s disinformation campaign against Biden, met with Kremlin-related figures who were part of the effort and promoted their conspiracy theories.
During his interview with ABC, Biden was reminded of the 2011 exchange he said he had with Putin in the Kremlin.

Biden says he told Putin that he did not think Putin had a soul. Putin’s response, Biden recalls, was to say, “We understand each other.”

“Look, the most important thing when dealing with foreign leaders, and I’ve dealt with a lot of them over the course of my career, is just getting to know the other guy,” Biden told ABC.

When interviewer George Stephanopoulos asked Biden if he thought Putin was “a murderer”, the president said, “Mhmm. I think.”

“The price he will pay, well, you will see soon,” continued Biden. “There are places where it is in our mutual interest to work together. That is why I renewed the START agreement with him. It happened while he was doing this, but it is extremely in the interest of humanity that we diminish the prospect of a nuclear exchange.”

CNN’s Zachary Cohen, Marshall Cohen and Katelyn Polantz contributed to this report.

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