US President Joe Biden said on Thursday that there was some evidence that Russian President Vladimir Putin was isolating himself and punishing some of his advisers, but added that the United States did not have much hard evidence to say for sure. When CNN’s MJ Lee asked the President how badly the Russian president was being misinformed by his advisers, Biden replied: “This is an open question. There are many speculations, but it seems that – I am not saying this with certainty – he seems to be isolated and there are some indications that he fired or placed some of his advisers under house arrest. ” “But I do not want to put too much into it at the moment, because we do not have so much hard data,” he added. U.S. government officials have expressed confidence this week in an assessment of information that Putin was seduced by military advisers about the success of the Russian military during the war, which has been going on for more than a month. Biden also noted that he was “skeptical” that Putin would withdraw all his forces from the Ukrainian capital, Kiev.
“So far there is no clear evidence that he is withdrawing all his forces from Kyiv,” Biden said. “There is also evidence that he is reinforcing his troops in the Donbas region. Depending on how you view Putin, I am a little skeptical.” He added: “I do not know the answer, but so far he has not withdrawn everything – the idea that he is withdrawing his troops from Kyiv and moving south, there is no evidence that he did that.” Biden told reporters after commenting on the US Strategic Oil Reserve. Biden, however, added that there were indications that Putin was “strengthening” his forces in the Donbass region of Ukraine. What Moscow is saying: Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peshkov said earlier on Thursday before Biden spoke that Moscow was concerned that the United States allegedly did not understand Moscow’s decision-making process, the state-run TASS news agency reported.
Rejecting US comments Wednesday that Putin was being misinformed by his advisers, the Kremlin said it regretted that his style of work remained unclear in Washington and that such a “misunderstanding” led to “careless decisions with dire consequences.” Peshkov. , according to TASS.
CNN’s Zahra Ullah contributed to the report in this post.