White House Chief of Staff Ron Klein declined to say on Tuesday whether US President Joe Biden would announce any “concrete military steps” against Russia in tonight’s address on the state of the Union, he told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer in an interview with Biden. stressed, “what he has gathered, which is an unprecedented coalition – NATO plus our partners from the EU, the UK, Canada, Australia, Japan – to do two things: provide all kinds of aid … and also come together with unprecedented sanctions against a country as big as Russia.
“So what you’re going to hear the president talk about tonight is this coalition that he helped bring together, he’s leading the assembly,” Klein told Wolf, “along with the next steps to tighten sanctions against the oligarchs.” supporting Putin, who are benefiting from the Putin regime, and the next steps to obtain humanitarian and military aid for Ukrainians.
Klein also declined to assess Putin’s mental state, saying only to CNN that Putin “has done something he has not done to such an extent before, launching a completely unprovoked unwarranted invasion of a country as large and significant as Ukraine.” “.
Earlier on Tuesday, CNN reported that the US intelligence community has made assessing the state of mind of Russian President Vladimir Putin a top priority in recent days as it seeks to determine how this affects its response to Ukraine’s rapidly escalating crisis. , according to two sources familiar with the effort.
Klein cited sanctions already in place after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, saying Biden’s actions had already garnered praise from both allies and political opponents.
“It’s hard to impose sanctions on a country as big as Russia, it’s hard to get everyone together, and I think that’s why you see both Democrats and Republicans, including people who weren’t big fans of Joe before. “Biden said this effort, this global effort to punish Putin and his regime, is tougher and stronger than they expected,” he said.
Follow our live coverage of Biden’s address on the state of the Union here.