Washington Free Beacon Staff

June 6, 2024

President Joe Biden claimed in an interview Thursday that he has known Vladimir Putin "for over 40 years"—meaning they would have met when Putin was serving as an undercover KGB officer.

"I’ve known him for over 40 years. He’s concerned me for 40 years. He’s not a decent man—he’s a dictator and he’s struggling to make sure he holds his country together while still keeping this assault going," Biden told ABC News anchor David Muir during an interview in France on the anniversary of D-Day.

It is highly unlikely that Biden, then a Delaware senator, would have known Putin in the early to mid 1980s. Putin, who worked for the Soviet intelligence service from 1975 until 1991, was serving as an undercover agent at the time, on assignment in East Germany and, allegedly, in Singapore and New Zealand.