Capping off a five-day trip to Europe that included a consequential NATO summit, President Joe Biden declared Russian President Vladimir Putin “already lost the war” in Ukraine while standing on the turf of the alliance’s newest member, Finland.
“There is no possibility of him winning the war in Ukraine,” Biden said. “He's already lost that war.”
"If you look at every one of his strategic goals that he set out, he has failed to achieve," National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said in an interview with Spectrum News on Thursday. "That's what the President was referring to, in terms of [Putin's] strategic goals, he hasn't won a single thing."
Biden noted Putin could decide to “end the war tomorrow,” and what agreement is ultimately reached regarding Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which has now extended well into its second year, depends upon the Russian leader.
The comments came during a press conference with Finnish President Sauli Niinistö in which Biden got defensive over a reporter’s question about the U.S. being a reliable NATO partner well into the future. A bipartisan group of senators this week reintroduced a bill that would prevent any president from withdrawing from the alliance without Congressional approval.
“There's overwhelming support from the American people. There's overwhelming support from the members of the Congress, both House and Senate – in both parties, notwithstanding the fact of some extreme elements of one party,” he said.
“No one can guarantee the future,” Biden added. “But this is the best bet anyone could make.”
When the reporter followed up with a question to Niinistö about any concerns regarding Biden’s comment that no one can guarantee the future, the U.S. president shot back.
“You can't tell me whether you're going to be able to go home tonight. No one can be sure what they're going to do. I'm saying as sure as anything can possibly be said about American foreign policy, we will stay connected to NATO,” he said.
The trip played out nearly five years to the day since then-President Donald Trump infamously stood alongside Putin in Helsinki and cast doubt on his intelligence apparatus. That was just days after Trump tore through a NATO summit where he disparaged the alliance and from which he threatened to withdraw the United States.
In contrast, Biden, a former Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman, has repeatedly emphasized the need to rebuild international coalitions and argued his background in international policy is proof that decades of experience on the world stage has mattered for the presidency.
Biden on Thursday also said he did not think there was “any real prospect” of Russia using nuclear weapons.
“Not only has the West, but China and the rest of the world have said: ‘Don’t go there,’” he said.
The joint press conference followed a meeting by Biden and Niinistö at the Presidential Palace in which the two leaders reiterated their support for Ukraine and Biden congratulated his Finnish counterpart on becoming the newest member of NATO, according to the White House.
"I've been doing this a long time," Biden said to open the meeting. "I don't think NATO has ever been stronger."
"Both leaders welcomed the recent agreement between Türkiye, Sweden and NATO for President Erdoğan to send Sweden’s NATO accession protocol to Turkish parliament for ratification, and underscored their desire to welcome Sweden into NATO as soon as possible," the White House said. "President Biden and President Niinistö also took note of the recently signed co-financing agreement between the U.S. and Finnish export credit agencies, which will enable the United States and Finland to partner more closely on high priority projects like 5G telecommunications and climate."
Biden also met with the leaders of other Nordic nations including Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Iceland. Sweden is poised to be admitted as NATO's 32nd member country after it pledged more cooperation with Turkey on counterterrorism efforts while backing Ankara's bid to join the European Union. Finland gained NATO membership earlier this year.
Both Finland and Sweden abandoned a history of military nonalignment and sought to join NATO alliance after Russia invaded Ukraine last year.
Biden's brief stop in the shoreline Finnish capital is the coda to a tour that was carefully sketched to highlight the growth of a military alliance that the president says has fortified itself since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Finland's admittance to NATO effectively doubled the alliance's border with Russia.
Biden arrived in Helsinki after what he deemed a successful NATO summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, where allies agreed to language that would further pave the way for Ukraine to also become a futuremember. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called the summit's outcome "a significant security victory" for his country but nonetheless expressed disappointment at not getting an outright invitation to join.
"The President committed that, in addition to helping work with the allies to develop a path toward membership in NATO, that the G7 leaders will commit to long-term security commitments to Ukraine's self defense for when the war is over," Kirby said. "Because there could be a matter of time between when the war is over and when they can accede to NATO membership."
Biden and other administration officials also held what aides said were pivotal conversations with Turkey before that country dropped its objections to Sweden joining NATO.
Biden said he felt good about the trip. "We accomplished every goal we set out to accomplish," he told reporters Wednesday before the flight to Finland.
And despite Zelenskyy's expressed frustrations, Biden — who met with the Ukrainian leader Wednesday in Vilnius — said Thursday that Zelenskyy "ended up being very happy."
Opening the broader meeting, Niinistö said his Nordic counterparts had one overriding objective: "guarantee the future — security-wise, environmental-wise and technology-wise." Biden added that the "nations around the table not only share common history, but we share common challenges, and I would add presumptuously, common values."
Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson, who saw Biden in the Oval Office last week, lightheartedly remarked to Biden that "I have met you more than I've met my own family."
The talks at the seaside Presidential Palace in the heart of Helsinki were to focus on closer cooperation between the Nordic countries and the United States on security, environment and technology issues, Niinistö's office said. Biden also scheduled a news conference with Niinistö before departing for Washington.
Biden is the sixth U.S president to visit Finland, a country of 5.5 million that has hosted several U.S.-Soviet and U.S.-Russia summits. The first involved President Gerald Ford, who would sign the so-called Helsinki Accords with more than 30 other nations in 1975.
But Charly Salonius-Pasternak, senior researcher at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs, noted that Biden's visit marked the first time a sitting U.S. president came to Finland to honor the country itself, rather than as a neutral location for meeting Russian leaders or other similar reasons.
"The fact that Biden has chosen to go specifically to Finland for Finland is symbolic and, in some ways, very concrete," he said. "It's a kind of deterrence messaging that only the United States can do."
In the Cold War era, Finland acted as a neutral buffer between Moscow and Washington, and its leaders played a balancing act between the East and West, maintaining good relations with both superpowers.
Finland and neighboring Sweden gave up their traditional political neutrality by joining the European Union in 1995 but both remained militarily nonaligned, with opinion polls showing a clear majority of their citizens opposed to joining NATO. That changed quickly after Feb. 24, 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine.