The White House is seeking to downplay speculation that President Joe Biden veered off-script this week when he accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of committing genocide in Ukraine.
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“The president was speaking to what we all see, what he feels is clear as day, in terms of the atrocities happening on the ground,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters Wednesday. “The president was calling it as he sees it” and shooting “from the shoulder,” she added later in her briefing.
Psaki described the mass grave and evidence of civilians being slaughtered in Bucha, outside of Kyiv, as “not an anomaly.”
But she was adamant Biden was not undermining a State Department legal determination regarding “genocide” before bristling at criticism that Biden was confusing the public and allies by expressing personal opinions at odds with or ahead of U.S. policy. The State Department has not started the internal process, instead supporting an international counterpart.
“He’s the president of the United States and the leader of the free world, and he is allowed to make his views known at any point he would like,” Psaki said.
Psaki also clarified that Mi-17 helicopters, valued at $800 million, were included in the latest tranche of military assistance to Ukraine after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky asked for them during their almost hourlong phone call Wednesday. The pair discussed the imposition of more sanctions as well.
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Biden told reporters in Iowa this week that it is becoming “clearer and clearer that Putin is trying to wipe out the idea of being Ukrainian.” He had earlier told a crowd gathered at a biofuel processing plant in Menlo that “your family budget, your ability to fill up your tank, none of it should hinge on whether a dictator declares war and commits genocide a half a world away.”
