US President Joe Biden said on Thursday that his government had “indications” that Russian President Vladimir Putin had “expelled or placed some of his advisers under house arrest”, although he acknowledged that there was “no conclusive evidence”.
He also said that Vladimir Putin “looks isolated”.
But at the same time, the American president noted that there is “a lot of scenarios” around his Russian counterpart and assessed that perhaps “too much weight” should not be given “information” about the situation in Moscow.
State Department spokesman Ned Price spoke of “information” from open sources – in other words, not from intelligence services – in which Russian officials were “pushed aside, removed” or “placed under house arrest.”
“We have reason to believe that President Putin feels he has been misled. “If you look at the last five or six weeks, he clearly made miscalculations,” he said.
The US president’s communications director, Kate Bedingfield, spoke more categorically on Wednesday about “permanent tensions” between the Russian president and his generals.
The US president also said yesterday that he was “skeptical” of Russia’s announcements that it was withdrawing some of its troops from parts of Ukraine and focusing on Donbass, in the eastern part of the country.
“So far there is no evidence that (Russia) is withdrawing all its troops from Kyiv,” Biden told reporters after his position on the release of much of the US strategic oil stockpile to address rise in fuel prices.
According to a Pentagon official, Russian forces withdrew from the Chernobyl nuclear power plant and “abandoned” the Khostomel military airport, northwest of Kiev, but “we continue to consider it a redeployment.” “We have absolutely no indication that these soldiers are returning home, or that they will stop getting involved,” he added.
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