President Joe Biden vowed to hold Saudi Arabia accountable after OPEC+ decided to push up oil prices by cutting its production quotas amid Russia’s war in Ukraine.
“I’m not going to get into what I’d consider and what I have in mind. But there will be, there will be consequences,” Biden said Tuesday.
WORLD AWAITS BIDEN’S RESPONSE AS PUTIN UNLEASHES MISSILE STRIKES ON UKRAINE
Biden’s comments, made to CNN during his third televised interview of the year, come after White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told the network the president believed the United States needed to reevaluate its relationship with the kingdom after the Saudi-led oil cartel announced its decision last week. Europe is already bracing for an energy crisis, given the continent’s dependence on Russian oil and natural gas.
During the foreign policy-heavy sit-down, Biden insisted he had “no intention” of meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin during the G-20 summit next month in Indonesia, but that position could change if he wanted to talk about detained Americans.
For Biden, his “Armageddon” comment, likening the Russia-Ukraine war to the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, was “directed” to Putin because he “cannot continue with impunity to talk about the use of a tactical nuclear weapon, as if that’s a rational thing to do.” The president acknowledged there had been discussions within his administration about “red lines” in the war but declined to make them public.
In a previewed clip, Biden also added he considered Putin a “rational actor,” revealing himself not to be a subscriber of the so-called “mad man” theory many people have used to describe the strongman.
“I think he is a rational actor who has miscalculated significantly,” Biden said. “I think he thought he was going to be welcomed with open arms, that this was the home of Mother Russia in Kyiv.”
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Biden taped the interview after the Group of Seven leaders held an emergency meeting about Russia and Ukraine earlier Tuesday.
