Joe Biden has accused Russian dictator Vladimir Putin of acting like a “teenager” in his new memoir.
According to extracts of ‘Promise Me, America,’ shared by the Wall Street Journal, the former US president claimed Putin had a “petulant tone” and “liked to slouch during a meeting, feigning indifference, like a teenager”.
Biden also said Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s acting background “turned out to be very good training” for a wartime leader.
Yet not all his words were so warm for his beleaguered ally.
He said the Ukrainian president “could be moody and stubborn in our private conversations, and not as grateful as I would have expected”.
Biden also said members of Donald Trump’s team asked him to sign a letter which would allow them to negotiate directly with Putin, in between winning the 2024 presidential election and before being sworn into office two months later.
The former president was in office when Putin invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
He offered staunch support to Ukraine even during his final days in office, giving Kyiv a $500 million military aid package shortly before Trump returned to the White House.
Trump has taken a completely different route. Though he once promised to end the Ukraine war within the first 24 hours of his second term, his team has struggled to make any progress with negotiations.
Trump himself has bent over backwards to appease Putin, rolling out the red carpet for him in a private Alaska summit last year and introducing a sanctions-busting diesel deal with Russia in October this year.
He has also watered down support for Ukraine, regularly called for Zelenskyy to be ousted from office and refused to acknowledge that the war started through Russia’s invasion.
Ukraine recently shot down fresh proposals from Russia, communicated via the US, which suggested redrawing Europe’s security order in exchange for a possible ceasefire.
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