The Biden Conundrum Continues

Over the weekend, Ukraine's Foreign Minister Kuleba said of the meeting with US representatives in Warsaw,

"Today is a real opportunity to thank the United States for everything it has done for Ukraine so far. We thank every nation – not all assistance is reported in the media, but I know what every country has done, and we thank every one of them. But no one has done more for Ukraine throughout this time than the United States," the foreign minister stressed.

Yet Ukraine President Zelensky remarked on the same day,

NBC: Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy thinks Biden is “all talk" and lacks the courage to respond to Russia pic.twitter.com/2M4FxC0fSc

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) March 27, 2022

The story at the Red State blog observes,

That’s the correct take, regardless of whether one personally thinks the US should be more involved in Ukraine at the moment. If Biden weren’t trying to present himself as a savior, “uniting'” the world against Russian aggression, then Zelensky’s critique might be out of bounds. But what Biden is doing is what he’s always done throughout his political career, which is to pretend he’s in the thick of the action when he’s actually just falsely pumping up his ego.

. . . I can’t imagine how frustrating it is for the Ukrainian president to see someone like Biden playing celebrity on the world stage and taking credit for things he didn’t even do, while refusing to take direct action.

The contradiction may stem from the fact that foreign minister Kuleba and the defense minister met with their counterparts, Secretaries Blinken and Austin, without Biden being there. However, the red light-green light affair over sending Polish Mig fighters to Ukraine is an indication that Biden can cancel any prior agreement. On March 6, Secretary Blinken said Poland had a "green light" to transfer the jets to Ukraine; by March 10, Biden appears to have changed his mind:

“POTUS will do what the military advises here and the advice now is not to do this and instead send the Ukrainian government more things they can make good use of,” a senior administration official told POLITICO. Ukraine has “many planes they already don’t fly much because of Russian air defense.” The official added that it’s “not clear what sending more planes achieves.”

The takeaway, certainly from Zelensky's point of view, is that Biden is timid and unreliable. Certainly the implication from the "senior administration official" is that the Pentagon knows better than Zelensky what Zelensky really needs.

The problem is not so much that Biden said something like what Reagan said (though Reagan was referring specifically to the Berlin Wall in an apostrophe to Gorbachev, implying that Gorbachev should remain in power to tear it down, while Biden said something vaguely implying regime change), the real issue is that Reagan meant it, while Biden was bloviating.

Biden is simply the uncertain creature of his handlers, who themselves are not serious people. Putin read Biden correctly; the one both he and Biden completely misread was Zelensky.