Biden Spox Kirby Laughs Out Loud During Briefing At Putin Remark On ‘Very Complicated’ Ukraine Situation
Biden NSC Coordinator for Strategic Communications John Kirby laughed out loud and mocked Russian President Vladimir Putin’s remark that the situation in Ukraine has become “very complicated” for Russia.
In a recorded message released on Tuesday, Putin described the situation in Russia-occupied regions of Ukraine as “extremely complicated” or “extremely difficult,” depending on the translation, in an attempt to buck up security forces involved in the illegal invasion.
Kirby held an on-the-record briefing with reporters via Zoom on Tuesday morning, during which he was asked about the remarks, which he was apparently hearing for the first time.
Mr. Kirby couldn’t suppress a laugh at Putin’s characterization, and had a simple-sounding solution for the problem: “Get the hell out!”:
FELICIA SCHWARTZ: Hi. Thanks for doing this. John, wondering if you have any reaction to the nearly 45 billion for Ukraine in the omnibus? And then also there are comments from Putin this morning in a video address, he acknowledged that the situation in Russian-occupied regions of Ukraine is complicated. And I was wondering how you guys are viewing that assessment at the White House, or what it says?
JOHN KIRBY: I’m sorry I didn’t get the second part of your question about the Russian-occupied. I’m sorry. Who said what?
FELICIA SCHWARTZ: There was a there was a video address from Putin this morning. And he described this the situation in Russian occupied areas of Ukraine as “complicated.”
JOHN KIRBY: (long laugh) Okay. Got it. All right. So on the first one, I think we saw a statement from OMB. We welcome this negotiation on the omnibus because it’s important to keep the government going. Important to address a range of funding challenges. Obviously, Ukraine is in inside of all that. And and we welcome this additional funding to help continuing to support Ukraine….
The second question, I, I don’t know that we’ve all taken in the video. I haven’t seen the video, so I can’t speak to Mr. Putin’s specific comments with respect to complications. As you say, he puts it in the Russian-occupied territories.
I would venture to say that things could be a heck of a lot less complicated for the Russians in Ukraine if they would just get the hell out and just take their troops out of the country and then there wouldn’t need to be any complications.
Short of that, which obviously doesn’t seem to be something that Mr. Putin is willing to engage as an idea of of simplifying issues in Ukraine. We’re going to continue to make sure we can support Ukraine’s effort to defend itself. And that gets right back to your first question, which is this additional funding that the omnibus bill will give us now in terms of supplemental requests for security assistance.
Watch above via Mediaite.
