White House: Biden and Putin have not had direct contact recently
US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said the US is taking "a lot of measures" to counter Russia's efforts to interfere in the US election.
TASS news agency reported on October 21 that, according to US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby, US President Joe Biden has not had direct contact with Russian leader Vladimir Putin recently.
He made the remarks when asked whether Mr Biden would contact Mr Putin to express US concerns about alleged Russian efforts to influence the US election scheduled for November 5.
“The president has not had any direct contact with Vladimir Putin,” Kirby told reporters in an online briefing.
The spokesman said the US was taking “a lot of steps” to counter Russia’s efforts to interfere in the US election. “Some of them we discuss, some of them we don’t,” he said.
According to Kirby, the US has "clearly" expressed its concerns to Mr Putin and the Russian government.
Moscow has repeatedly denied allegations that it tried to interfere in the US election process. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Pavel Zarubin, host of the TV show “Moscow. Kremlin. Putin,” that Russia did not have a preferred candidate in the US election, but said “the Democrats are more predictable.”
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Russia does not interfere in the internal affairs of sovereign states, and the US presidential campaign is no exception. She called attempts to blame Moscow “a manifestation of the disease of American democracy.”
The US presidential election will take place on November 5. The race for the position is between Donald Trump, a Republican, and Kamala Harris, a Democrat. Trump was the 45th president of the United States, serving from 2017 to 2021. He lost the 2020 election to Democratic candidate Joe Biden and is now trying to regain the White House. Harris is Biden's vice president.
