2023-07-13 16:03:23
US President Joe Biden already considers Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin to be the loser in Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine. “Putin has already lost the war. Putin has a real problem,” said the 80-year-old at a press conference with Finnish President Sauli Niinistö in Helsinki on Thursday. The Russian President could end the war tomorrow. “But there is no way he will win the war in Ukraine,” he said.
Regarding the prospects for Ukraine’s NATO membership, Biden stressed that there was no question of whether the country should join the alliance or not. “It’s about when they can join. And they will join NATO,” Biden said. He again pointed out that no country could become a member of NATO if it was under attack. At its summit this week, NATO dashed hopes of early accession. Although the alliance in Vilnius gave the country hope of admission, a formal invitation was subject to conditions.
Biden said he doesn’t think the Ukraine war will drag on for years. For one thing, he doesn’t believe that Russia, with its capacities and resources, can sustain the war forever. On the other hand, there will be conditions in which Putin will come to the conclusion that continuing the war in Russia’s interests no longer makes economic and political sense. His hope and expectation is that Ukraine will make significant progress on its offensive and that there will be some sort of negotiated settlement to the war.
At the beginning of April, Finland became the 31st member of NATO and borders Russia over a distance of around 1,340 kilometers. Biden traveled on to the EU country after the NATO summit in Vilnius. There he met with Niinistö on Thursday and, together with the Finnish head of state, held a summit with the heads of government of the other Nordic countries Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Iceland.
Biden described Finland’s entry into NATO as an “incredible win” for the western military alliance. “I don’t think NATO has ever been stronger,” Biden said at the meeting with Niinistö. The US and Finland shared the same values. It took him about “three seconds” to agree to Finland’s application for membership.
At the summit of the Nordic countries, he emphasized the harmony in climate policy. It’s about preserving the planet. This is the “only existential threat facing humanity,” Biden said. There is not much time left, but he is confident. “If we keep working together, we can get through this.” The Nordic countries have long played a leading role in this.
Observers see Biden’s appearance above all as a contrast to his predecessor Donald Trump. He met with Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin in 2018 in the Finnish capital Helsinki for his first and only summit. The meeting turned into a disaster because Trump allowed himself to be paraded by Putin. At the press conference, the then US President caused outrage because he did not support the US intelligence services’ assessment that Russia had interfered in the 2016 US presidential election. Rather, Trump said at the time that Putin’s denials in this regard were “extremely strong and powerful.”
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