President Biden said Thursday there was “no evidence” that Russian President Vladimir Putin had withdrawn troops from positions around the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv.
“It seems so far … the idea that he pulls all his troops out of the Kyiv area and moves south, there’s no evidence he did that,” Biden said after an announcement that he was empowering the United States to release 1 million barrels of oil per day for six months from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to mitigate rising gas prices.
Biden’s comment echoed that of Defense Department spokesman John Kirby, who said Tuesday that the Russian troop movements represent “a repositioning, not a true withdrawal.” Biden said he remains very skeptical about Putin’s intentions.
“The question of whether he withdraws his forces depends on how exactly you read what is going on. So far there is no clear evidence that he withdraws all his forces from Kyiv,” he said. “There is also evidence that he is strengthening his troops down in the Donbass.”
The president added, “I’m a skeptic, but I have no proof that he’s taking a break.”
President Biden at the White House on Thursday. (Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg made a similar statement about the deployment of Russian troops.
“According to our intelligence services, Russian units are not retreating but repositioning themselves,” Stoltenberg told reporters on Thursday. “Russia is trying to regroup, resupply and reinforce its offensive in the Donbass region.”
Meanwhile, Biden appeared to back away slightly from reports Wednesday through declassified US intelligence agencies that concluded that Putin had been misled by his military advisers, who were taking reprisals for their critical views of the Russian military’s performance in the feared Ukraine.
When asked by a reporter to what extent he believed Putin had been misinformed, Biden sounded much more uncertain than other members of his administration.
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“That is an open question. There is a lot of speculation, but he appears – I’m not saying for sure – he appears to be self-isolating and there is evidence he has fired or placed under house arrest some of his advisers. But I don’t want to stress that too much now because we don’t have that much hard evidence.
On Wednesday, White House communications director Kate Bedingfield gave a clearer assessment.
“We believe Putin is being misinformed by his advisers about how poorly the Russian military is performing and how sanctions are crippling the Russian economy because his senior advisers are too afraid to tell him the truth,” Bedingfield told reporters .
While NATO and US officials have taken note of the movement of Russian troops to the eastern part of the country, Ukraine’s state-owned nuclear company said on Thursday that Russian forces were reportedly abandoning positions at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, which they held at the start of the conflict would have confiscated. According to Ukrainian officials, these troops were seen en route to the border with Belarus.