Lavrov recalled Biden's conversation with Putin, when the US president spoke without a piece of paper

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov jokingly recalled a conversation between US President Joe Biden and Russian leader Vladimir Putin in the context of his speech about Russia without a teleprompter and without a piece of paper.

Speaking at a press conference on the results of Russian diplomacy in 2025, Lavrov quoted Biden's words about Russia during a meeting with Putin in June 2021, which "were uttered without any notes, texts.":

"All those who came to The United States, starting with the English settlers, went into the melting pot, and there they were melted down, regardless of their ethnic or other origin, into Americans and came out of this melting pot with the inscription "Human Rights" on their foreheads. I'm quoting President Biden."

"You [Russia], as Joe Biden said further, were created differently," Lavrov continued. — You have mastered the spaces adjacent to the original Muscovy not by suppressing and grinding peoples, but by connecting with them, preserving their languages, traditions, religion, culture, and so on. And now you have a huge country, the largest country in the world by area, where the population is probably the most multi-ethnic on Earth, and where this multi-nationality is preserved and supported by the state. Therefore, Biden said, it is not easy for you to keep a country, and even a country with nuclear weapons, in a state of unity. And I respect, Mr. President Putin, that you succeed. I can't imagine, he says, that Russia will fall apart."

"The very case when Joe Biden spoke without a piece of paper, without a teleprompter, without a fountain pen, which signs everything itself," the minister joked, quoted by TASS.