During his press conference yesterday, President Joe Biden sounded as if he were of two minds about Vladimir Putin and Russia and the alleged threat that Russia will invade Ukraine at any moment. When asked about sanctions, he said that “what you’re going to see is that Russia will be held accountable if it invades.” And then he added: “And it depends on what it does. It’s one thing if it’s a minor incursion and then we end up having a fight about what to do and not do, et cetera.”
“But if they actually do what they’re capable of doing with the forces amassed on the border, it is going to be a disaster for Russia if they further invade Ukraine, and that our allies and partners are ready to impose severe costs and significant harm on Russia and the Russian economy,” Biden continued. He promised that “The cost of going into Ukraine, in terms of physical loss of life, for the Russians, they’ll — they’ll be able to prevail over time, but it’s going to be heavy, it’s going to be real, and it’s going to be consequential.”
Biden said that he thinks Putin “does not want any full-blown war” but that he will “test the West, test the United States and NATO,” though “he’ll pay a serious and dear price for it that he doesn’t think now will cost him what it’s going to cost him….”
But then Biden seemed to open a door to a way out of the confrontation. “[T]he two things he said to me that he wants guarantees of it: One is, Ukraine will never be part of NATO. And two, that NATO, or the — there will not be strategic weapons stationed in Ukraine. Well, we could work out something on the second piece (inaudible), what he does along the Russian line as well — or the Russian border, in the European area of Russia.”
