Fox News television presenter Bill O'Reilly has refused to say he was sorry after the Kremlin demanded an apology for describing Russian President Vladimir Putin as "a killer."
"Apparently the Putin administration in Moscow [is] demanding that I, your humble correspondent, apologize for saying old Vlad is a killer," O'Reilly said on his U.S. television show broadcast late on February 6.
"So I'm working on that apology but it may take a little time.... Might want to check in with me around 2023," he said.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov had earlier called O'Reilly's comments "insulting and impermissible," and insisted that Putin was due an apology from "such a respectable television network."
Peskov was responding to O'Reilly's quip that "Putin's a killer" during an interview on February 5 with U.S. President Donald Trump.
Trump responded: "There are a lot of killers. We've got a lot of killers. What do you think? Our country's so innocent?"
Kremlin opponents say Putin was behind killings of critics such as journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who was shot dead in 2006, and politician Boris Nemtsov, who was gunned down in February 2015, as well as 1999 apartment building bombings that killed hundreds of people in Russia.