WASHINGTON — The armed rebellion in Russia weakened Vladimir Putin and cemented his position as a global “pariah,” U.S. President Joe Biden said on Wednesday.
It’s difficult to tell how much Putin has been weakened, Biden said as he spoke to reporters at the White House, but he said the uprising demonstrated that the Russian leader’s grip has loosened because of the war he is fighting in Ukraine.
“He’s losing the war at home. And he has become a bit of a pariah around the world,” Biden said of Putin. “And it’s not just NATO. It’s not just the European Union.”
Biden said that Putin’s standing has been diminished with nations outside the West such as Japan as a result of the Russian president’s continued assault on Ukraine. Putin is weaker now than he was before mercenary group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin threatened his leadership with an aborted mutiny over the weekend, Biden said.
The U.S. president has said that neither America nor its military allies were involved in the Wagner group uprising, which ended Saturday without bloodshed after Prigozhin told his mercenaries to stand down. Belarus helped to broker the deal, and Prigozhin has since claimed that the rebellion was a protest and not an attempted coup.
