Russia calls back its Ambassador to US after Joe Biden brands Putin ‘A Killer’

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On Wednesday, Russia called its US ambassador Anatoly Antonov back home for consultations, as Moscow mulls avoiding what its foreign ministry called an irreversible degradation of relations with America during the early days of the Biden administration. Tensions between both countries are increasing following recently declassified reports on Russia’s suspected attempts to interfere in the 2020 presidential election, US condemnation over the poisoning of Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny, and Joe Biden calling Vladimir Putin a killer in an interview on Tuesday. A spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova said, “The new American administration has been in power for two months, and a symbolic 100-day anniversary is just around the corner, which is an appropriate milestone to try and assess what the Biden team is successful in and what it’s not”.

Point to be noted that the recent situation allows Americans to acknowledge the associated risks of the fraying relationship between both countries. She added, “Washington has itself sent into a stalemate in recent years”. Biden sounded a similar tone during the ABC interview on Tuesday, which aired on Wednesday. The host asked whether Biden thought the Russian president was a killer and threatened some form of retaliation. Biden was asked during the interview about investigations into Russia-linked cyber attacks and an intelligence report linking the Kremlin to election-related online interference that promoted Donald Trump and right-wing conspiracy theories. The President responded and said, “The price he’s going to pay, you’ll see shortly”. The back-and-forth comes as Washington once again contends with the fallout from a suspected Russian influence campaign.

It is noteworthy that a newly declassified report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence has indicated that Russia once again conducted a sweeping social media influence effort during the 2020 US presidential election. It used Ukraine-linked individuals connected to Russian intelligence and prominent US persons and media to harm the Biden campaign. The former President Trump was alleged of having an overly deferential relationship with Putin while he was in office, in spite of Russian attempts to meddle in US elections and reports that Russia offered Afghan militants bounties to kill US troops. In 2017, Donald Trump said, “There are a lot of killers. You think our country’s so innocent”? Russia and the US have also clashed over the proposed Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline. Now, the US is reportedly preparing additional sanctions on entities related to the project.