In his first public comments since Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin’s short-lived rebellion against the Kremlin over the weekend, President Joe Biden said on Monday he is in constant contact with Western allies and emphasized the U.S. had nothing to do with the events in Russia.
The president said when the situation started to unfold, he directed his national security team to give him hour-by-hour updates and “prepare for a range of scenarios.” He also said he convened a Zoom call with key allies in response to the events to make sure they were all “on the same page.”
“They agreed with me that we had to make sure we gave [Russian President Vladimir] Putin no excuse, let me emphasize, we gave Putin no excuse, to blame this on the west and to blame this on NATO,” Biden said on Monday. “We made clear that we were not involved, we had nothing to do with it, this was part of a struggle within the Russian system.”
Biden also spoke with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the two leaders “may” speak again later on Monday or Tuesday morning, and have agreed to “stay in constant contact.”
“I told [Zelenskyy] that no matter what happened in Russia … we, the United States, would continue to support Ukraine’s defense and its sovereignty and its territorial integrity,” he said.
Questions are still swirling around Prigozhin’s fate, Putin’s political future and the impact of all of it on the war in Ukraine.
The president said it is “still too early to reach a definitive conclusion about where this is going.”
“The ultimate outcome of all of this remains to be seen,” Biden said.
A feud between the Wagner Group leader and Russia’s military brass that has festered throughout the war erupted into a mutiny that saw the mercenaries leave Ukraine to seize a military headquarters in a southern Russian city and roll seemingly unopposed for hundreds of miles toward Moscow, before turning around after less than 24 hours on Saturday.
The president’s comments on the situation came during scheduled remarks on broadband infrastructure funding. Biden took the first few minutes of the announcement to address the developments in Russia.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
