President Biden on Wednesday said that Russian President Vladimir Putin has “already lost Ukraine,” adding that aid to Ukraine during the Russian invasion is open-ended.
“There’s no way that Putin is going to be able to — he’s already lost Ukraine,” Biden said. “He thought that if he invaded Ukraine, first of all, he’d get a welcome by every Russian speaker, they’d say, ‘Come on in.’ Secondly, he thought what would happen is that NATO would collapse, NATO would not to do anything, they’d be afraid to act.”
“Go down the line, none of that’s happening,” he said in a PBS NewsHour interview the day after he delivered the State of the Union address.
Biden said NATO is coordinating in support of Ukraine, despite Putin thinking it wouldn’t.
His comments come after he stressed his support for Ukraine amid Russia’s invasion during the State of the Union and recognized Oksana Markarova, Ukraine’s ambassador to the U.S., in the audience.
Biden also pushed back on criticism from a small group of Republican lawmakers who have suggested that too much U.S. assistance is going to Ukraine. PBS’s Judy Woodruff mentioned Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), who has suggested money spent in Ukraine should go to Americans, and Biden audibly laughed.
“If these guys don’t want to help Ukraine, I get it, they don’t want to do that, but what are they going to do to when … Russia rolls across Ukraine or into Belarus or anywhere else?” he added.
When asked if aid to Ukraine is open-ended, Biden replied, “Yeah, it is.”
The first anniversary of the full-scale Russian invasion will be on Feb. 24. Since then, U.S. military assistance to Ukraine has exceeded an estimated $28 billion.
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