Russian President Vladimir Putin may be self-isolating and placing some of his advisers on house arrest, President Joe Biden said Thursday.
The remarks, which the president said he couldn’t completely verify, came as the president took questions after announcing plans to combat high gas prices.
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When asked about reports that Putin was being misled by his advisers, Biden gave a surprising response.
“That’s an open question,” he said. “There’s a lot of speculation. But he seems to be — I’m not saying this with certainty — he seems to be self-isolating, and there’s some indication that he has fired or put under house arrest some of his advisers.”
Biden then added a few qualifiers.
“But I don’t want to put too much stock on that at this time,” he said. “Because we don’t have that much hard evidence.”
White House Communications Director Kate Bedingfield said Wednesday the Biden administration believes Russian military officials are misleading Putin about the status of the war in Ukraine.
Her words echoed reporting that surfaced earlier that morning about how Russian military officials are afraid of explaining specific losses to Putin to avoid punishment.
“We have information that Putin felt misled by the Russian military, which has resulted in persistent tension between Putin and his military leadership,” she stated during Wednesday’s press briefing. “We believe that Putin is being misinformed by his advisers about how badly the Russian military is performing and how the Russian economy has been crippled by sanctions because his senior advisers are too afraid to tell him the truth.”
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Bedingfield would not say if Biden decided to declassify the information but added that “it is increasingly clear that Putin’s war has been a strategic blunder that has left Russia weaker over the long term and increasingly isolated on the world stage.”
