Joe Biden has been accused by the Kremlin of trying to appear like a "Hollywood cowboy" after the US president called Vladimir Putin "a crazy SOB (son of a bitch)".
While discussing climate change at a fundraiser in San Francisco, Biden took a quick diversion to mention that the world should be worried about Putin's repeated nuclear threats against the West.
“We have a crazy SOB, that guy Putin and others and we always have to be worried about a nuclear conflict,” he said. “But the existential threat to humanity is climate.”
In response, the Kremlin criticised Biden for what it described as a poor attempt to sound like a “Hollywood cowboy.”
“The use of such language against the head of another state by the president of the United States is unlikely to infringe on our president, President Putin,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
"Has Putin ever used one crude word to address you? This has never happened. Therefore, I think that such vocabulary debases America itself," he added.
In later comments to a state television reporter, Peskov added: “This is a disgrace for the country itself, I mean the United States.”
This isn't the first time the US president has used offensive language. In 2022, Biden cursed a Fox News reporter by calling him a "son of a bitch" in a heated moment.
In the past, he has also referred to Putin as a "butcher" and a "war criminal".
In California, Biden also took aim at Donald Trump, ridiculing his likely opponent in the November presidential election for comparing himself to Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who died last week.
Trump has not assigned blame to Putin for Navalny's death, while Biden said there can be "no doubt" the Russian president was responsible.
Despite the end of the Cold War, animosity between the US and Russia is on the rise again as a result of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Russian President Vladimir Putin is hated in Washington for his strong-arm tactics and his success in getting Moscow to pull much above its weight in international affairs.
