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President Biden said Thursday that he won’t send US troops into Ukraine to evacuate Americans if Russia invades — saying that the action could trigger a “world war” and “things could go crazy quickly.”
Asked in his first TV interview of 2022 if there’s a scenario that would result in him sending US troops to help trapped Americans, Biden told NBC News anchor Lester Holt, “There’s not. That’s a world war when Americans and Russia start shooting at one another.”
“American citizens should leave now,” Biden told Holt in an interview taped Thursday afternoon.
“It’s not like we’re dealing with a terrorist organization,” Biden said. “We’re dealing with one of the largest armies in the world. It’s a very different situation and things could go crazy quickly.”
Biden added that if Russian President Vladimir Putin is “foolish enough to go in, he’s smart enough not to, in fact, do anything that would negatively impact on American citizens.”
Holt followed up, “You’ve told him that, that Americans will be a line that they can’t cross?”
“I didn’t have to tell him that, I’ve spoken about that. He knows that,” Biden said.
The US government previously urged US citizens to flee Ukraine, saying there would not be a US airlift if war breaks out — as there was in Kabul, Afghanistan, in August following the Taliban’s reconquest of the country after 20 years of war.
Biden in December ruled out deploying US troops into Ukraine, which is not a formal US ally, as a way to deter Putin from invading.
Biden has threatened “severe” sanctions against Russia, but horrified Ukrainian officials last month when he said at his second solo White House press conference that a “minor incursion” by Russia into Ukraine might result in less-severe penalties — with one Ukrainian official saying that the remark could give Putin a “green light” to invade.
The US says Putin has massed more than 100,000 troops near Ukraine’s borders. The White House recently alleged Russia may stage a “false flag” attack on its own forces to provide a justification for war. Putin is demanding that NATO rule out accepting Ukraine as a member, but the Cold War-era military alliance has declined to do so.
When Biden was vice president in 2014, Russia invaded the Crimean peninsula and then annexed the territory from Ukraine following a disputed referendum. Putin’s government also allegedly supports a pair of pro-Russia breakaway states in eastern Ukraine.
Biden this week threatened to penalize Russia by blocking operation of the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline, which is poised to begin piping fuel directly to Germany rather than through Ukraine.
“If Russia invades — that means tanks or troops crossing the border of Ukraine, again — then there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2,” Biden said.
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