Russian President Vladimir Putin was unprepared for the Biden administration’s response to Moscow’s aggression against Ukraine and its visibility into Russia’s actions, the White House said.
President Joe Biden and top U.S. officials have warned of a Russian invasion of Ukraine going back weeks. Biden’s aides have also telegraphed assessments of Putin’s troop movements and propaganda plans, responding this week with a first slate of economic sanctions.
“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.
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Psaki explained that the Russian leader is “improvising” and “adapting” in response to the detailed level of U.S. intelligence, which has triggered a response from Washington and Western allies.
After Putin’s recognition of two separatist-occupied regions in Ukraine on Monday and the Russian leader’s order of troops into these regions, Biden imposed new sanctions on Russian financial institutions, as well as expanded penalties on Russian sovereign debt and members of the Russian elite and their families. On Wednesday, the president cleared the way for sanctions on the Russian-backed Nord Stream 2 pipeline to resume. Allies have imposed their coordinated penalties alongside the U.S.
The White House has said Russia should expect an escalating economic response from the U.S. and Western allies if it increases its aggression against Ukraine.
Psaki pushed back on the notion that Putin’s improvisation in response to U.S. actions while moving ahead with a planned invasion, as the White House asserts, was contradictory.
“He can still be preparing to invade, which we’ve said, and that continues to be the case, while making adaptations on when, if, how, to what his strategy is. That’s what we’re seeing,” Psaki said. “Both are true.”
Earlier Wednesday, Biden’s State Department spokesman Ned Price said reports of a Russian attack on the northeastern city of Kharkiv “are entirely consistent with what we have been saying for some time now.”
Price slammed Russian diplomacy with Western allies as “diplomatic kabuki theater.”
The U.S. also believes that “additional Russian military forces” are moving into breakaway regions, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said. “Not beyond that region that we have seen, but we can’t confirm with any great specificity the numbers and what the formations are.”
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The administration has raised the alarm about Russia’s encirclement of Ukraine, which has seen Moscow amass more than 150,000 troops on the former Soviet state’s borders.
Kirby said there was “no indication” that the assembly of forces is a bluff. “Every indication we have is that he is poised to attack Ukraine again … with significant military force,” he added.
