After Biden accused Russia of poll intervention, Putin 'endorses' Kamala Harris

Vladimir Putin has unexpectedly pledged his support to Vice President Kamala Harris over former President Donald Trump in the November 5 presidential election. His pro-Harris comments came at the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok on Thursday, September 5, just after the Biden administration accused Russia of interfering in the presidential bid.

On September 4, Attorney General Merrick Garland called out the Russian government's “covert campaign to interfere and influence the outcome of our country's elections.”

Nevertheless, Putin asserted the next day that while President Joe Biden was running for his re-election bid, he was the country's “favourite.” Now that the baton has been passed on to Harris following Biden's July exit, Russia is all for supporting the new Democratic presidential candidate.

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Russia declares news presidential hopeful “favourite”

“I told you our favourite, if you can call it that, was the current President Mr Biden. He was removed from the race, but he recommended all his supporters to support Ms. Harris. So we will do the same. We will support her,” the Russian president said on Thursday.

Ultimately, he acknowledged that the power to pick their “favourites” vested in American people, as he foregrounded that Russia “will respect that choice.”

Further speaking on the Harris vs Trump front, Putin said that the Republican presidential hopeful “has introduced such a number of restrictions and sanctions against Russia that no president has ever introduced before.”

“If Ms Harris is doing well, then maybe she will refrain from actions of this kind.”

Although Trump has been the constant subject of praise in Putin's diary, he previously implied that Biden “is more experienced, more predictable.”

In July, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov painted a different picture of Russia's support for Harris. "At the moment, we cannot assess the potential candidacy of Ms Harris from the point of view of our bilateral relations because, so far, her contribution to our bilateral relations has not been noticed.

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"There were statements that were replete with rhetoric quite unfriendly toward our country, but her actions in relations to bilateral relations come under neither a plus nor a minus sign."

US vs Russia exchange amid ongoing election campaigns

Putin has continued offering his two cents on the 2024 presidential election. However, the US isn't necessarily accepting these tips as savoury. National Security Spokesman John Kirby previously said that the Russian president “should just stay out of our elections.”

Key highlights from Wednesday's meeting of the Justice Department's election Threats Task Force also underscored that the United States are not a big fan of Russia's ongoing influence campaign revolving around the alleged creation of fake news sites to push Russian propaganda.

“The American people are entitled to know when a foreign power is attempting to exploit our country's free exchange of ideas in order to send around its own propaganda,” Merrick Garland said on Wednesday.

During the meeting, prosecutors unsealed a 71-page affidavit in a federal district court in New York. According to CBS News, they've filed charges against two Russia-based employees of a state-controlled media outlet of conspiring to commit money laundering and conspiring to violate the Federal Agents Registration Act.

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