Biden confuses Ukraine with Iraq again

US President Joe Biden has one again confused his nation’s military mission in Iraq with the Russian operation in Ukraine. Commenting on the news that Moscow was withdrawing forces from the city of Kherson, he misnamed it Fallujah.

The gaffe happened during a press conference on Wednesday, when Biden explained how Washington took Moscow’s announcement that it was redeploying troops away from the right bank of the Dnieper River, where the regional capital of Kherson is located. Fallujah, meanwhile, was the site of intense fighting in 2004 during the US war in Iraq.

Russia incorporated the former Ukrainian region last month, after its residents voted in a referendum in support of the move. The regional authorities have been urging Kherson residents to leave, citing a threat posed by Ukrainian troops. On Wednesday, the Russian Defense Ministry announced that it was withdrawing forces and taking up defensive positions on the left bank of Dnieper, saying the step was necessary to save soldiers’ lives and regroup for action elsewhere.

After correcting himself and clarifying that he was referring to Kherson and not Fallujah, as he had initially said, Biden assessed that the Russians were going to “lick their wounds, decide whether – what they’re going to do over the winter, and decide whether or not they’re going to compromise.”

Last week, Biden confused Ukraine with Iraq in remarks made in Florida, as he was blaming the conflict for the global surge in inflation.

“I mean, excuse me, the war in Ukraine,” he corrected himself. “I’m thinking of Iraq because that’s where my son died.”

Beau Biden died in 2015 from brain cancer, which his father links to exposure to toxic fumes from burn pits used by the US military to dispose of waste on bases in foreign nations. Beau was deployed to Iraq in 2008 as part of the Delaware Army National Guard.

In his State of the Union speech in March, Biden called the Ukrainian people “Iranian” as he pledged his government’s support to them.