MOSCOW. Nov 8 (Interfax) - Russian President Vladimir Putin has disagreed with assessments regarding U.S. presidents, adding that inappropriate remarks are a tool of the internal political struggle.
"The political strife inside the U.S. has been growing increasingly acute. Opponents and political rivals of incumbent heads of state use all sorts of techniques to somehow disparage them. Moreover, instruments have been used that are often hard-hitting and are far from the level of this political culture," Putin said at a plenary session of the Valdai International Discussion Club.
There were verbal attacks on President George W. Bush that "he is so incompetent, uncultured, ignorant", but "it was all a lie," Putin said.
"He [former U.S. President George W. Bush] and I had a great deal of disagreements as regards the attitude to Russia, the policy on the Russian track. [...] All that was done in the last analysis, taken in totality, was looked at as covert intervention," he said.
Putin said that he had extensively communicated with George W. Bush in-person, had spent a night on his ranch in Texas and had met with his parents on a number of occasions. In a private conversation, his father, George H. W. Bush said that "we made a huge mistake by starting to block the Olympic Games in Moscow. It was such nonsense, such a mistake. Why have we been doing all that?" Putin said, citing the words of George Bush Senior.
When asked about his recollections of his work with other former U.S. presidents, Putin said, "All of them are interesting people. It's hard to imagine a person who would make it to the top post in one of the world's leading countries but would be a complete nonentity, a dull and uninteresting person."