Ratcliffe: Putin is thriving on Biden's weakness

FPI / June 24, 2021

John Ratcliffe, Trump administration Director of National Intelligence, said that he “could make an argument that the first five months of the Biden administration have been the best of Vladimir Putin’s political life.”

“Just from an economic standpoint, folks know that Vladimir Putin was 3-0 when it comes to pipelines,” Ratcliffe told Fox News on Sunday.

“Joe Biden shut down the Keystone pipeline, that was a win for Putin; criminal networks in Russia shut down one of our major pipelines, the Colonial Pipeline, that was a win for Putin,” Ratcliffe said.

“And, of course, Joe Biden responded by giving Vladimir Putin the one thing that he wanted most, which was the Nord Stream II pipeline, the ability to finish that, and, by doing so, to control the flow of energy into Western Europe,” Ratcliffe said on “Sunday Morning Futures.”

Before meeting with Biden this month, Putin was already having a good year and it just got better while the U.S. got nothing from the Biden-Putin summit, Ratcliffe said.

“Vladimir Putin was on the world stage with equal billing with the leader of the free world, and he made no concessions,” Ratcliffe said.

“He made no concessions about cyber attacks, he made no concessions about political dissidents, he made no concessions about Russian interference in Ukraine or Belarus. And that’s a political win for Vladimir Putin back home that he could not possibly have dreamed about.”

Free Press International