For viewers of Russian state TV, the war of words ignited by U.S. President Joe Biden’s March 16 interview with ABC News, in which he agreed that Russian President Vladimir Putin was a “killer,” seemed to provoke a great deal of patriotic hysteria. Putin quipped back that “we always see our own traits in other people and think they are like how we really are” and challenged Biden to a verbal duel. But the frosty exchange doesn’t actually change anything in U.S.-Russia relations—or in Russian public opinion, for that matter. There was never any chance of anything approaching a rapprochement between the two powers, and what little cooperation there is—on climate change, the pandemic, and nuclear nonproliferation—has always been purely pragmatic. The latest spat between U.S. and Russian leadership, then, is nothing more than a routine affair.
That’s not what the Kremlin would have you believe. Biden’s comments in the ABC News interview were a gift to the Russian propaganda machine, and it has seized on them in a—futile—attempt to inspire Russians to rally around their leader. In reality, that flame of fandom was extinguished years ago. For Putin, it’s all gone downhill since 2018, when he tanked his approval rating by making an unpopular reform to Russia’s pension system. Last registering at 63 percent approval in March of this year, it’s a far cry from the record high of 88 to 89 percent that followed Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea.
