President Joe Biden claims Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has “already lost Ukraine,” though Russian forces continue to occupy around a fifth of its territory, and a much-anticipated counter-offensive has produced minimal gains at the cost of many Western weapons systems which were supposed to be “game-changing”.
“He thought that if he invaded Ukraine, first of all, he’d get a welcome by every Russian speaker, they’d say, ‘Come on in.’ Secondly, he thought what would happen is that NATO would collapse, NATO would not to do anything, they’d be afraid to act,” Biden said, adding: “Go down the line, none of that’s happening.”
The backwards declaration of victory may end up being somewhat of a Bush-style “Mission Accomplished” moment for Biden, as the U.S. and NATO continue to be drawn into the conflict with very little to show for it.
Biden’s bar for success in war may be fairly low, however. The President previously hailed his Saigon-style withdrawal from Afghanistan, which saw dozens of American soldiers killed or injured by a suicide bomber – and an Afghan aid worker and seven children murdered when he authorized a retaliatory drone strike on the wrong target – as an “extraordinary success”.
