Biden called Trump ‘Putin’s puppy.’ The president-elect may put Moscow on a tighter leash.

(Source nbcnews.com)

When a Russian spy who defected was fatally poisoned nearly 15 years ago, blaming Russian President Vladimir Putin from his deathbed, Joe Biden warned that the United States had been giving Putin “a bye” for far too long. “I’m not a big fan of Putin’s,” Biden, then the incoming chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in 2006. “I think we should have a direct confrontation with Putin politically about the need for him to change his course of action.” Putin didn’t alter his course.

Since then, Russia’s confrontations with the West have grown only more overt. And now, what is believed to be the Kremlin’s sweeping cyber hack of U.S. government agencies puts Biden on a high-stakes collision course with Putin when he becomes president next month. But unlike when President Donald Trump entered the White House, after Putin’s interference in the 2016 election, Biden takes office after more than two decades of failed U.S. attempts to forge a cooperative relationship with Moscow.” Russia is way more powerful today than it was 20 years ago, and it’s way more powerful today than it was four years ago,” said Michael McFaul, who was U.S. ambassador to Russia during President Barack Obama’s first term. “It’s a much more immediate threat that we continue to underestimate.”