Russia taunts debate candidates, while others hold back on Trump-Harris clash

Foreign policy and Russia’s war in Ukraine took up a sizable chunk of Tuesday night’s 100-minute debate between Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris and her Republican rival, former President Donald Trump.

But color the Kremlin unimpressed by the quality of the discussion and the candidates’ clashing plans to end the war and deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“To be honest, I don’t know why this is big news,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Wednesday, according to a report by the official Russian Tass news agency, comparing the debate to a wrestling match on the Titanic.

“Is it big news for us to see yet another show put on by people who clearly take no responsibility whatsoever for their words?” Ms. Zakharova said in an interview carried on Sputnik Radio.

The spokeswoman, known for her often provocative language, added she thought it was “crazy to hear two people … actually discussing how and for what they are going to punish the world.”

Governments around the world were for the most part diplomatically discreet about their views on how the debate played out.

Mao Ning, spokeswoman for China’s Foreign Ministry, refused to respond when asked about the substantial exchanges between Ms. Harris and Mr. Trump on China policy, tariffs and economic competition with Beijing.

“The presidential elections are the United States’ own affairs,” Ms. Mao said. “We have no comment on that. That said, we are opposed to making China an issue in U.S. elections.”

Mr. Trump repeatedly attacked Ms. Harris over what he said was the Biden administration’s failure to prevent Russia’s 2022 invasion of its neighbor, claiming Mr. Putin would never have initiated the war had he been president.

He also said he could halt the fighting immediately if elected, but declined to provide details of how he would do so when pressed by Ms. Harris. His refusal twice to say he favored a Ukrainian “victory” in the war sparked ripples of concern in Kyiv, The Associated Press reported.

Ms. Harris said the Biden administration deserved credit for rallying allies to support Kyiv in the war, saying Mr. Trump’s plan to end the war called for Ukraine to surrender a major chunk of its territory.

“I believe the reason Donald Trump says this war would be over within 24 hours is because he would just give it up,” she said at one point.

Mr. Trump said Mr. Putin had no respect for the “weak” Biden-Harris administration.

“Biden had no idea how to talk to [Mr. Putin],” Mr. Trump said at one point. “It’s only getting worse and it could lead to World War III. … We’re playing with World War III.”

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters the two candidates were using Russia and its president as political cudgels in the domestic debate.

“Putin’s name is being used as one of the tools in the American domestic political fight,” Mr. Peskov said. “We do not like that at all. We hope that they will leave the name of our president alone.”

Germany was one of the rare U.S. allies to wade into the debate about the debate, with the Foreign Ministry taking exception to Mr. Trump’s criticisms of its energy policies and its determination to move away from a reliance on fossil fuels. Mr. Trump said Berlin tried to engineer a shift away from fossil fuels to provide energy but “within one year, they were back to building normal energy plants.”

In a pointed online post, Germany’s Foreign Ministry said the country’s energy system is “fully operational,” relies on renewable fuels for more than 50% of its power needs, and is not building any new coal- or nuclear-powered plants.

“PS: We also don’t eat cats and dogs,” the post concluded, a cheeky reference to the now-famous moment in the debate when Mr. Trump accused immigrants in an Ohio town of eating the locals’ pets.

Europe and its trade and security practices were once again a target of Mr. Trump’s attacks in Tuesday’s debates, and many leading news outlets on the continent echoed the U.S. media’s early consensus that Ms. Harris got the better of Mr. Trump in the clash.

“Kamala Harris had previously been notorious for ’word salad’ responses to tricky questions, but her sharp, forensic performance put that behind her and it was Donald Trump’s answers that became increasingly erratic the more she got under his skin,” analyst David Charter wrote in a review of the debate for the London Times.