President Joe Biden defended himself against claims he underestimated Russian President Vladimir Putin after Moscow launched a far-reaching offensive against Ukraine.
“I didn’t underestimate him,” Biden said Thursday in the White House’s East Room. “He has much larger ambitions than Ukraine. He wants to, in fact, reestablish the former Soviet Union. That’s what this is about.”
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Although Biden repeated that U.S. troops would not be deployed to Ukraine, he conceded they would be “involved” if Russia were to cross into any NATO countries. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin ordered an additional 7,000 service members to Europe on Thursday.
Biden made the comments after announcing his second round of sanctions against Russia, hours after Putin declared “a special military operation” “to demilitarize and degenocide Ukraine.”
Biden stood by his economic measures despite Ukraine’s insistence that Russia be banned from the SWIFT banking system.
“That’s not the position that the rest of Europe wishes to take,” he said.
Biden also declined to answer questions about why he had not sanctioned Putin directly but indicated the option was still on the table.
“It’s going to be a cold day for Russia,” he said.
Biden’s second tranche of sanctions include restricting Russia’s ability to do business in dollars, pounds, euros, and yen, as well as bank access to U.S. financial institutions and state-owned enterprises to debt markets. The moves, too, will freeze assets in the United States and block half of Russia’s high-tech imports.
The U.S. has been proactive in disclosing intelligence regarding Russia’s plans concerning Ukraine.
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“It is our assessment that President Putin did not expect the United States to have the level of information that we have, did not expect us to put out the amount of information that we’ve put out, did not expect the global community to be as unified,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Wednesday.
