A few days before the summit meeting with US President Joe Biden, Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin sees relations with the USA in a serious crisis.
"We have a bilateral relationship that has bottomed out in recent years," Putin said in an excerpt from an interview with NBC News published on Saturday night after a translation by the station.
Biden is radically different from his predecessor Donald Trump, whom Putin described as an extraordinary, talented and colorful person.
Biden, on the other hand, is a "career man" who has spent practically all of his adult life in politics, Putin said, according to the translation.
With regard to Biden, the Kremlin chief also said there were some advantages and some disadvantages, but certainly not impulsive actions on behalf of a US president.
Biden had called Putin "a killer"
Putin has openly admitted several times that he supported Trump in the 2016 US presidential election.
The ex-president has repeatedly expressed his admiration for his Russian counterpart.
Biden has said in the past that he has no illusions about Putin.
Looking at a number of high-profile deaths in Russia, such as those of the Kremlin critic Boris Nemtsov, he had described the Russian president as a "killer".
When asked whether he was actually “a killer”, Putin said the term was part of the “macho attitude” common in Hollywood.
This in turn is "part of the political culture of the USA" - but this is not normal in Russia.
USA "don't want a conflict"
Biden and Putin will meet in Geneva on June 16.
The US president said on Wednesday that the US wanted a "stable, predictable relationship" and was not looking for conflict with Russia.
The White House repeatedly emphasizes that it does not want to reward Putin with the meeting and that a personal conversation is particularly important because of the differences between the countries.
At the meeting in Geneva, Biden says he wants to bring up a number of critical issues such as Russia's alleged influence on US elections and Russian hacker attacks.