President Biden on Tuesday called President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia a “rational actor” but said he had miscalculated badly about the reaction to his invasion of Ukraine, in an interview that was broadcast on CNN Tuesday night. Putin “thought he was going to be welcomed with open arms, that this was the home of Mother Russia in Kyiv, and that where he was going to be welcomed, and I think he just totally miscalculated”, Biden said in the interview with the host Jake Tapper. But Biden also said that Putin’s goals in sending troops into Ukraine were not rational, even if he is a rational person overall.

“If you listen to the speech he made after when that decision was being made, he talked about the whole idea of — he was needed to be the leader of Russia that united all of the Russian speakers,” Biden said. “I mean, it’s just, I just think it’s irrational,” Biden said. Biden also said in the interview that his recent comments during a fund-raiser warning about the threat of nuclear “Armageddon” in the Ukraine conflict were aimed at Putin. “I’m talking to Putin,” the president said in the interview. “He, in fact, cannot continue with impunity to talk about the use of a tactical nuclear weapon, as if that’s a rational thing to do.”

“And it could end in Armageddon,” he said, though he added that he did not think it will come to pass. Biden also told Tapper that he had “no intention” of meeting with Putin during the upcoming meeting of Group of 20 leaders next month, but that he would not reject a discussion about Brittney Griner, the US basketball star who has been held in Russia since February and was sentenced to nine years in prison for drug possession. “For example, if he came to me at the G20 and said, ‘I want to talk about the release of Griner,’ I’d meet with him,” Biden said. “I mean, it would depend.”

He quickly added: “I’m not about to, nor is anyone else prepared to, negotiate with Russia about them staying in Ukraine, keeping any part of Ukraine, et cetera. So it would depend on specifically what he wanted to talk about.” According to the network, Biden’s interview with Tapper came just hours after the President met the leaders of the G7 nations, who collectively reaffirmed their commitments to help Ukraine defend itself.

New York Times News Service