The Kremlin slammed former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris on Wednesday for dragging Russian President Vladimir Putin into Tuesday night’s debate, telling them to “leave our president’s name alone.”
Trump and Harris argued about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine during their 90-minute debate at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia.
Harris told Trump that Putin “would eat you for lunch” and said the Russian leader would be “sitting in Kyiv right now” if Trump were president. She also accused him of selling out Ukraine if he were to become president.
“The reason that Donald Trump says this war would be over within 24 hours is because he would just give it up, and that’s not who we are as Americans,” Harris said.
In turn, Trump tried to tie Harris to Putin by saying the 71-year-old ex-KGB operative endorsed her.
“Putin endorsed her last week [and] said, ‘I hope she wins,’ and I think he meant it,” Trump said during the debate.
Even though Putin did say he supported Harris during a press conference at the Eastern Economic Forum and cited her “infectious” laughter, his comments were widely seen as more trolling and sarcastic.
Trump also said he thought that “it’s in the U.S.’s best interest to get this war finished and just get it done, negotiate a deal.”
Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, told reporters that the Kremlin hadn’t followed the debate but was aware the candidates spoke of Russia, Putin, and the war in Ukraine.
“Of course, we noticed that both candidates mentioned our president, mentioned our country. Of course, the position is quite clear — the U.S. as a whole, no matter which party the candidates are from, maintains a negative attitude, an unfriendly attitude towards our country,” he said in a statement cited by Reuters.
“Putin’s name is used as one of the instruments in the domestic political struggle in the U.S. We really, really don’t like it, and we hope that they will leave our president’s name alone,” he continued.
Trump said during the debate that if he were elected, he would settle the war before even taking office and knocked President Joe Biden for not calling Putin in the past two years.
Peskov said a phone call would not have ended the conflict. Instead, he said what was needed was for the United States “to abandon its policy of using Ukraine as disposable material in an attempt to suppress everything connected with the Russian Federation.”
In Ukraine, political commentator Tymofiy Mylovanov, head of the Kyiv School of Economics, wrote that both candidates were “incredibly weak on Ukraine.”
“They blamed each other for a lack of competence and leadership but offered no strategy for moving forward,” he said. “Neither directly said if they wanted Ukraine to win.”
In Germany, Michael Roth, the Social Democratic Party chairman of the Bundestag foreign affairs committee, said Harris made Trump seem “like an aging incumbent, old, angry, and confused.”
“Harris has dismantled Trump on the open stage and positioned herself as a candidate of change. She deliberately provoked Trump, and he fell into the trap,” Roth said.
The German foreign office also hit back at Trump’s criticism of German energy reliance on Russia.
“Like it or not: Germany’s energy system is fully operational, with more than 50% renewables. And we are shutting down — not building — coal & nuclear plants. Coal will be off the grid by 2038 at the latest. PS: We also don’t eat cats and dogs,” it posted on X.
After Harris told Trump that world leaders were “laughing” at him, he brought up Hungary’s autocratic leader Viktor Orbán.
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“Look, Viktor Orbán said it. He said, ‘The most respected, the most feared person is Donald Trump. We had no problems when Trump was president,’” Trump said.
Orbán had not released a statement in response to the debate or Trump’s comments as of early Wednesday afternoon.