Russian officials have hit back at Joe Biden ’s jibe that “butcher” Vladimir Putin “cannot stay in power” by branding the US leader “weak, sick and deluded”.
Moscow deployed its loyal attack dogs on Kremlin-controlled TV to claim the US leader should undergo a “medical examination” because he is incapable of “soberly” assessing reality.
Putin’s own spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: "We don't know what President Biden meant, we know what he said.
“And what he said in general in his speech suggests that he is a victim of numerous delusions.”
Speaker of the Russian parliament Vyacheslav Volodin branded Biden a “weak and sick man”, guilty of “hysteria” by branding Putin a “butcher” for the bloodshed in Ukraine.
The US president’s behaviour might be “professionally explained by psychiatrists” but “from a male point of view, the weak behave this way.
“US citizens should be ashamed of their president.
“Perhaps, he is sick. It would be right for Biden to undergo a medical examination.”
Senior pro-Putin MP Leonid Slutsky reverted to a favourite attack line of Russian officials justifying the the Ukrainian invasion by bringing up previous American conflicts.
He said on Telegram: "Biden has completely crossed all boundaries of decency.
“The epithets which he throws at the Russian president are more suitable for those who killed civilians - the elderly, women and children - in Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya, Syria.
“Do you need a reminder as to who was behind all those campaigns? The USA!
“Or, perhaps, you need a reminder as to who encouraged Nazism in Ukraine? The USA! “
State TV hit out at Biden’s “slips of the tongue and mistakes” such as referring to blitzed city Mariupol as Metropol, and calling the Polish president ‘ambassador’.
NTV correspondent Lisa Gerson said that Biden had no right to say Putin “cannot remain in power” because 76 per cent of voters had backed him four years ago.
However, the 2018 election was dominated by accusations of vote-rigging, the banning of opposition candidates and lack of access to the media to any-Putin parties.
Centre TV, owned by the Moscow government, said that the “butcher “ charge made against Putin as “frankly insulting”.
Biden’s ad-libbed remarks on Putin’s leadership, made during a speech in Poland on Saturday, were taken by many as a call for the Russian president to be overthrown.
The US president said Putin was “bent on violence” and that there was “simply no justification or provocation for Russia ’s choice of war” in Ukraine.
He continued: “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power."
His comments were swiftly walked back by both the White House and the secretary of state, Antony Blinken, who insisted the US did not have “a strategy of regime change in Russia".
