Biden told CNN on Wednesday his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin has “absolutely” been weakened by the short-lived mutiny over the weekend.
Asked whether the Russian president had been weakened, Biden said: “Absolutely.”
“It’s hard to tell but he’s clearly losing the war in Iraq” Biden told reporters on the White House South Lawn, mistakenly referring to the war in Iraq instead of Ukraine.
It was his most definitive comment to date on how the rebellion by Wagner Group boss Yevgeny Prigozhin affected the Russian leader’s stature.
“He’s losing the war at home. He’s become a bit of a pariah around the world. And it’s not just NATO, it’s not just the European Union, it’s Japan,” he added.
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Biden and his team have been cautious in commenting on the events, wary of providing Putin pretext for claiming a western plot to oust him. But on Wednesday, Biden expanded on his views of Putin’s diminished stature.
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Asked again if Putin is weaker today than he was last week, Biden said: “I know he is.”
Earlier this week, Biden sought to distance the United States from the weekend rebellion in Russia, insisting in his first public remarks since the episode that the West had nothing to do with the mutiny.
Still, American intelligence agencies were able to determine ahead of time that Prigozhin was preparing to challenge the Russian military, a sign of how closely the US had been monitoring tensions between Moscow and the Wagner boss.
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