US presidential election: Putin will wait for official vote count before congratulating anyone

(Karachi) Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said that Russian President Vladimir Putin will not congratulate the newly-elected US President Joe Biden on his victory until all legal challenges are resolved, Spectator Index reported.

President Donald Trump had said his campaign would begin challenging US election results in court after media outlets declared Joe Biden victorious in the US presidential election. Trump said that the election is far from over.

Addressing media persons on Monday, Peskov stated that Kremlin will wait for official results of the US presidential election to be announced before commenting on its outcome.

Putin has kept mum over the matter since Biden claimed the presidency on November 7, by securing 290 of the least 270 Electoral College votes needed to win the White House. The Kremlin spokesman added that Moscow will wait for the official vote count to be announced.

In an interview back in 2019, President Vladimir Putin said that ties between Russia and the United States were getting worse and worse as the US administration had imposed dozens of sanctions on Russia.

“They (our relations) are going downhill, they are getting worse and worse,” Putin had stated.

Moscow’s ties with Washington sank to post-Cold War lows in 2014 when Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine. Biden was serving as vice president under President Barack Obama at the time. Relations soured further over US allegations that Moscow had meddled in the 2016 US presidential election to try to tilt the vote in Trump’s favour, something the Kremlin denied.