President Biden believes Russian President Vladimir Putin has “already lost Ukraine,” he told PBS NewsHour in a Wednesday interview.
“There’s no way that Putin is going to be able to — he’s already lost Ukraine,” Biden told NewsHour‘s Judy Woodruff. “He thought that if he invaded Ukraine, first of all, he’d get a welcome by every Russian speaker, they’d say, ‘Come on in.’ Secondly, he thought what would happen is that NATO would collapse, NATO would not to do anything, they’d be afraid to act.”
If you “go down the line, none of that’s happening,” Biden went on.
The president’s comments arrived the day after his 2023 State of the Union address, during which he emphasized the United States’ continued commitment to Ukraine in its war against Russia and recognized Ukrainian Ambassador Oksana Markarova in the audience.
Biden also addressed on NewsHour the criticism from GOP lawmakers, like Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), who have indicated a degree of discomfort with the amount of support the U.S. is providing Kyiv.
“If these guys don’t want to help Ukraine, I get it, they don’t want to do that, but what are they going to do to when . . . Russia rolls across Ukraine or into Belarus or anywhere else?” the president said.
Russia first invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022. “Since then, U.S. military assistance to Ukraine has exceeded an estimated $28 billion,”
