US President Joe Biden’s recent blunder in which he mixed up Ukraine and the Middle East sums up his poor mental state, former Russian leader Dmitry Medvedev has claimed.
Biden’s gaffe came in an interview with MSNBC on Saturday, as he discussed the Israeli military campaign in Gaza with host Jonathan Capehart. The US leader said West Jerusalem should not repeat the mistakes that Washington made following the September 2001 terrorist attacks.
“America made a mistake. We went after Osama bin Laden until we got him, but we shouldn’t have gone into Ukraine,” Biden stated. He then corrected himself, saying he meant “the whole thing in Iraq and Afghanistan,” referring to the US invasions and occupation of the two Middle Eastern nations. Confusing places and people has been a recurring issue for the 81-year-old president.
Medvedev, who serves as deputy chair of the Russian Security Council, posted a short clip of the gaffe on Sunday on social media, adding: “A rare kind of idiot.”
Some Russian officials have suggested that Biden’s slip of the tongue was Freudian.
“He didn’t mix it up. He can no longer keep to himself what everyone understands – the US has disgraced itself in the bloodiest manner with the whole Ukrainian project,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said.
Moscow perceives the Ukraine conflict as a US-led proxy war against Russia, in which Ukrainian soldiers serve as ‘cannon fodder’. The Russian military estimated that by the end of February, Kiev’s military losses had reached 444,000.
In the nine-minute interview with MSNBC, Biden mentioned Ukraine once, calling out former President Donald Trump for his skeptical attitude towards NATO. The incumbent leader described the organization as “critical to our national defense.” Moscow has cited the expansion of the military bloc in Europe as a key cause of the hostilities with Ukraine.