Ukraine war ‘won’t last for years’, predicts Joe Biden

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Joe Biden predicted the Ukraine war would not drag on for years and promised the US would remain committed to NATO despite fears it could pull out of the alliance if Donald Trump wins the 2024 presidential election.

Speaking in Finland, which became a NATO member earlier this year, the US president said his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin had become impoverished and was struggling to supply his troops.

“I don’t think the war can go on for years,” Biden told reporters. “I don’t think Russia can continue the war forever,” he said, arguing that Moscow did not have the “resources and ability” to sustain the conflict.

He continued, “I think a situation is bound to come where ultimately President Putin will decide that it is not in Russia’s interests, economically, politically or otherwise.”

While many in his administration and allied governments are frustrated about the pace of the Ukrainian counteroffensive, Biden said he hoped it would create momentum for peace talks.

“It is my hope and my hope that you will see that Ukraine will make significant progress on its invasion and come to a negotiated settlement somewhere.”

Ukraine’s long-awaited counteroffensive began in earnest in June, but has gotten off to a much slower start than Kiev and many of its backers had hoped.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has repeatedly said the war can only end if Russia withdraws its troops, including in Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula annexed by Moscow in 2014 that has since been heavily militarized.

Biden’s trip to Finland is the first by a US president since Trump held a chaotic press conference there with Putin five years ago.

The US President and other members of the alliance have repeatedly said this week that NATO is stronger and more united than ever. However, fears remain that if Trump wins the 2024 election, he may seek to reduce America’s leadership role in NATO or exit altogether.

“As certain as anything that can be said about American foreign policy, we will remain engaged in NATO,” Biden said.

Speaking alongside Biden, Finland’s President Sauli Niinisto said he had held several meetings with lawmakers, including Republicans, as part of consultations on joining NATO and said he was confident in America’s long-term commitment.

“The message was very clear, very united,” he said. “I have no reason to doubt the policies of the USA in the future.”

Meanwhile, Biden poked fun at the recent coup attempt by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a former Putin aide and founder of the Wagner mercenary group, which has played a central role in Moscow’s offensive in Ukraine.

“We don’t even know where he is and what his relationship (with Putin) is,” Biden said of Prigozhin. “If I were in his place, I would be careful what I ate, I would keep track of my menu.”

At the NATO summit in Vilnius this week, Czech President Petr Pavel was among those who warned that the lack of progress on the ground in Ukraine could lead to negotiations based on whatever gains Kiev can make by the end of the year. Is.

Zelensky said last week that Russia’s dense network of fortifications and landmines posed significant challenges to the country’s NATO-trained brigades.

Ukrainian troops have had limited success near the bombed town of Bakhmut in the east of the country and in the southern Zaporizhia region, but at a high cost.

Danilo, a soldier from Ukraine’s 17th Tank Brigade, told the Financial Times this week near the frontline in the Donetsk region: “We are fighting hard but it is a fight that goes meter by meter and it costs a lot of lives.” You have to pay with blood.” ,

This week’s NATO summit was marred by disagreements over how soon Ukraine could join the alliance. Putin said on Thursday that Kiev’s possible membership would pose new threats to Russia and claimed Moscow was ready to discuss alternative security arrangements.

Putin told state television that Ukraine’s drive to join NATO was one of the reasons he ordered a full-scale invasion of the country last year.

Putin said, “I am sure that this will not increase the security of Ukraine, and will make the world in general more insecure and create additional tensions in the international arena.”

He said Russia believed that draft agreements on security arrangements for Ukraine outside NATO – discussed during failed peace talks during the early weeks of the war – were “acceptable” if it “ensured Russia’s security”. She goes”.

But those proposals, which imply that Ukraine will accept limits on its military and the effective loss of territories it has occupied, are a non-starter given Ukraine’s determination to take back all its land.