US President Joe Biden claimed on Wednesday that Russia was losing the war in Iraq and that its president Vladimir Putin was a “pariah around the world,” defining that as 40 countries allied with Washington.
Biden was peppered with questions from reporters as he walked from the White House to the presidential helicopter, before flying to Chicago to deliver a speech about his economic agenda dubbed ‘Bidenomics.’
One of the questions was about whether Putin was weakened by the recent mutiny of the Wagner private military company.
“It’s hard to tell, but he is clearly losing the war in Iraq, he’s losing the war at home, and he has 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. It’s, you know, 40 nations,” Biden said.
The baffling comment was caught on video and shared by Biden’s Republican critics on social media, which did not stop one reporter from trying to erase it in her account of the event.
Shortly afterward, the White House released a statement about the strap marks on Biden’s face, revealing that they were caused by the president’s use of a CPAP machine to help him breathe at night.
“Did he really mean Iraq? Or could he have meant Vietnam?” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova joked to reporters after hearing Biden’s remarks. Both wars were long-running expeditionary adventures by the US.
Meanwhile, the Russian military continued to successfully battle the Western-supplied and trained Ukrainian forces, apparently unaffected by the mutiny. The attempted insurrection lasted less than two days, with Wagner agreeing to stand down on Saturday evening. The group received no support from the Russian military, government, or society for what Putin described as a “stab in the back” of the nation.
Moscow has also continued to do business with the majority of the globe, with only the US and its allies – EU, NATO, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand – openly backing Ukraine and imposing an embargo on Russia.
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