President Biden claimed Thursday that he has “known” Vladimir Putin “for over 40 years” — despite Russia’s president having served as an undercover KGB intelligence officer through the entire 1980s.
“I’ve known him for over 40 years. He’s concerned me for 40 years. He’s not a decent man,” Biden, 81, told ABC News anchor David Muir during an interview in France at the Normandy American Cemetery to commemorate the 80th anniversary of D-Day.
Putin worked as an intelligence officer in the Soviet Union’s spy network from 1975 to 1991, with postings in his hometown of St. Petersburg and the former East Germany before he retired with the rank of lieutenant colonel — making it highly unlikely Biden was aware of the future US adversary’s existence as early as claimed.
He went on to serve as an aide to St. Petersburg’s then-mayor Anatoly Sobchak and as deputy mayor from 1991 to 1996, followed by stints as a staff member at the Kremlin and head of the Federal Security Service, which succeeded the KGB after the USSR’s collapse in 1991, according to the Guardian.
“Until he was handpicked in August [1999] by then-President Boris Yeltsin to become prime minister, Putin had never been a public figure,” the Washington Post reported in January 2000.
Biden did meet Putin at least once, when the former was serving as US vice president and the latter was Russia’s prime minister — and the pair spoke again at a summit in Geneva, Switzerland, in June 2021.
The Post has reached out to the White House for comment.
In his Thursday interview, Biden stressed that the permission he recently gave for Ukraine to use US weapons only allowed for strikes inside the Russian-occupied Kharkiv region.
“They’re authorized to be used in proximity to the border when they’re being used on the other side of the border to attack specific targets in Ukraine,” the president said. “We’re not authorizing strikes 200 miles into Russia and we’re not authorizing strikes on Moscow, on the Kremlin.”
Putin said Wednesday that the US supply of weapons to Ukraine and authorization of their use was a “direct participation in the war against the Russian Federation” and the Kremlin would “reserve the right to act in a similar way,” referencing at one point his nation’s nuclear capabilities.
“He’s a dictator, and he’s struggling to make sure he holds his country together while still keeping this assault going,” Biden told Muir Thursday. “We’re not talking about giving them weapons to strike Moscow, to strike the Kremlin, to strike against — just across the border, where they’re receiving significant fire from conventional weapons used by the Russians to go into Ukraine to kill Ukrainians.”
Biden said in remarks earlier Thursday that “tyrants” are putting the transatlantic NATO alliance “more at risk now than at any point since World War II” — but affirmed the US and Europe “will not bow down.”
“We cannot surrender to the bullies, it is simply unthinkable. If we do, freedom will be subjugated, all Europe will be threatened,” he said.
The president was expected to meet later Thursday with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, as the US continues to provide aid and support for the embattled nation’s war effort more than two years after Russia’s invasion on Feb. 24, 2022.
