American President Joe Biden has verbally attacked Russian President Vladimir Putin in view of the growing number of cyberattacks.
Putin has "a real problem, he is at the head of an economy that has nuclear weapons and nothing else," said Biden on Tuesday during a visit to the headquarters of intelligence coordinator Avril Haines.
"He knows he's in trouble, which makes him even more dangerous in my eyes."
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov replied on Wednesday that the American president was “fundamentally wrong”.
Russia is a "very responsible nuclear power".
His country has nuclear weapons and the oil and gas sector, "but to say that Russia has nothing else is fundamentally wrong," said Peskov.
"Clear violation of our sovereignty"
Biden also accused the Kremlin of meddling in next year's congressional election by spreading false information. "Look at what Russia is already doing about the 2022 elections and disinformation," Biden said. “This is a clear violation of our sovereignty.” Regarding the problem of cyberattacks, for which Washington blames Russia, among others, Biden chose sharp words: If the United States is involved in “a real war with a great power, it will be the result of a cyber attack being".
Mid-term congressional elections will be held in the United States in the fall of 2022, with all seats in the House of Representatives and one-third of the seats in the Senate standing for election.
The White House recently repeatedly asked Russia to stop cyberattacks attributed to Russian hackers.
Moscow rejects any responsibility.
While Biden attacked his Russian colleague, high-level talks between the two sides about arms control took place in Geneva on Wednesday.
The meeting, which was attended by American Deputy Foreign Minister Wendy Sherman and her Russian colleague Sergei Riabkov, is a continuation of the dialogue that Biden and Putin also started in Geneva last month.
Kremlin spokesman Peskov called the talks a "positive sign".
When announcing the date, the US State Department announced: “Through this dialogue we are trying to lay the foundation for future arms control measures and steps to reduce risk.” Riabkov told Russian news agencies that the talks would help Moscow “understand how serious our US is -Colleagues with the achievement of a focused, energetic dialogue on strategic stability is “.
The relationship between Washington and Moscow is extremely tense. The deterioration in relations had already started during the time in office of the former US President Donald Trump, although many critics accused him of being too lenient towards Putin. Tensions have intensified since Biden took office. In addition to the issue of cybercrime, relations between the two countries are primarily burdened by accusations of election manipulation and the Ukraine conflict.