President Joe Biden told a joint session of Congress on Wednesday that he will be tough on Russian President Vladimir Putin and prevent Moscow from threatening national security by responding to aggressive acts with proportionate moves — and cooperating when possible.
“He understands we will respond,” the commander in chief said.
The president spoke days after speaking to Putin over the phone while the Kremlin’s military buildup along its border with Ukraine was at a fever pitch. During that call, Biden offered the Russian president a summit in the coming months. The surprise move was first accepted by Moscow, which then offered to study the proposal.
“I made very clear to Putin that we’re not going to seek … escalation, but their actions will have consequences,” Biden told members of Congress in a sparsely populated, COVID-19-era House chamber.
In recent days, tens of thousands of Russian troops have pulled away from Ukraine’s eastern border, near the eastern flank of NATO, in what some security analysts viewed as a test of Biden’s determination. During the standoff, the president kicked Russian diplomats out of the country and levied hefty financial restrictions on the Russian bond market. The actions, he said, were in response to Russian election interference and cyberattacks on the United States government. In his address to Congress, Biden said he could cooperate with Putin, too.
While Putin continues to deny the SolarWinds attacks that affected a host of U.S. government agencies and private businesses, and the Russian strongman famously told former President Donald Trump that he had nothing to do with election interference, Biden has opted for the U.S. intelligence community’s assessment.
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“They did both of those things. And I told them we would respond, and we have,” he said. “But we can also cooperate when it’s in our mutual interests.”
Biden said his administration extended the New START Treaty to limit nuclear arms in February and referenced cooperation on climate change. Putin participated in Biden’s virtual climate summit last week.
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On other global threats to national security, Biden said the nuclear programs of rogue nations such as Iran and North Korea present a “serious threat to America’s security and the security of the world.”
The president said he will work through allies to address the threats “through diplomacy as well as stern deterrence.”
