Joe Biden has said he believes Vladimir Putin is a “rational actor” who grossly misjudged his prospects of occupying Ukraine.
The US president told CNN in remarks released ahead of a rare televised interview on Tuesday that he believed his Russian counterpart had underestimated the ferocity of Ukraine’s defiance of the invasion.
“I think he … thought he would be welcomed with open arms, that this was Mother Russia’s home in Kyiv and where she would welcome him, and I think he totally miscalculated,” Biden said.
“I think he’s a rational actor who miscalculated significantly.”
The president spoke as his administration seeks what he has described as an “exit ramp” for Putin to de-escalate his invasion of Ukraine before resorting to weapons of mass destruction.
Biden warned last week that the world is at risk of “Armageddon” in unusually direct comments about the dangers posed by Putin’s thinly veiled threats to use nuclear weapons to aid Russia’s faltering attempt to take over areas of Ukraine.
Putin’s mood has been the subject of much debate after the Russian president suffered a series of recent military setbacks in the invasion, which he launched in February.
On Tuesday, Biden suggested he believed Putin was generally rational, but questioned the language used when he announced the invasion of Ukraine in February.
“If you listen to the speech he gave afterwards, when that decision was being made, he talked about the whole idea of: He had to be the leader of Russia who would unite all the Russian speakers. I mean, it’s just, I think it’s irrational,” Biden said.
Biden’s remarks came after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy asked G7 leaders for more air defense systems and a surveillance mission on Belarus’ border, as Russia continued to attack key infrastructure in Ukraine with a new missile wave
In response to Zelenskiy’s speech, G7 leaders issued a statement saying they would “stand firm with Ukraine for as long as it takes.”
In a separate video address on Tuesday night, Zelenskiy said: “The enemy launched a second wave of terrorist attacks against our country. As of this morning, there were 28 missiles, of which 20 have been shot down. More than 15 drones, almost all of them are Iranian combat drones. Most of them were shot down.”
White House national security council spokesman John Kirby said Tuesday that the United States was working to speed up the shipment of Nasam air defenses capable of engaging Russian cruise missiles. The German magazine Der Spiegel reported on Tuesday that Ukraine had received the delivery of the German Iris-T air defense system.
With Agence France-Presse