President Biden said Monday that the U.S. and its allies made clear to Moscow that they were not involved in the Wagner mercenary group's brief uprising in Russia over the weekend, calling it "part of a struggle within the Russian system."
As Russia faced a shocking rebellion, White
House officials reached out to foreign and domestic oil producers about the
situation unfolding in one of the world’s leading oil powers, a US official
said.
US President Joe Biden said he'd instructed
members of his national security team to "prepare for a range of
scenarios" as the rebellion was underway. Biden emphasized the US and its
allies had "nothing to do" with Saturday's events in Russia.
Russian intelligence services were
investigating whether Western spy agencies played a role in the aborted mutiny,
the TASS news agency quoted Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov as saying on Monday.
The U.S. intelligence community "was
aware" that the mutiny orchestrated by Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin's
"was a possibility" and briefed the U.S. Congress
"accordingly" before it began, said a source familiar with the issue,
who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The Biden administration would not address a
widely held perception in Washington that the uprising showed that Russian
President Vladimir Putin has been weakened by his 16-month war against Ukraine.
State Department spokesperson Matt Miller
told reporters it is as yet unclear what the ultimate implications of what
happened will be, but he noted: "It is a certainly a new thing to see
President Putin's leadership directly challenged. It is a new thing to see
Yevgeny Prigozhin directly questioning the rationale for this war and calling
out that the war has been conducted essentially based on a lie."
Biden said he spoke with key allies on a
video conference to make sure everyone was on the same page and coordinated in
their response.
"They agreed with me that we had to make
sure that we gave Putin no excuse - gave Putin no excuse - to blame this on the
West and blame this on NATO," he said.
Biden, who spoke to Ukraine President
Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Sunday, said he would be speaking to him again later on
Monday or Tuesday morning to make sure they were "on the same page".
The White House said Biden also consulted on
Monday with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni about the situation.
Biden said he and his team would continue
assessing the fallout from the incident.
"It's still too early to reach a
definitive conclusion about where this is going," he added.
He said his message to allies was "it's
important that we stay completely coordinated".
Kirby said the United States does not know
the parameters of the deal reached between Putin and Prigozhin that ended the
uprising. He said he did not know Prigozhin's whereabouts.
"We're not taking sides in this internal
matter," he said.
Kirby said a new package of U.S. assistance
for Ukraine would be announced soon. Sources told Reuters that the United
States would announce as soon as Tuesday a new military aid package for Ukraine
worth up to $500 million.
Post a Comment