Biden: U.S. is through ‘rolling over’ in fights against Putin, Russia
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden on Thursday said the days of the U.S. “rolling over” to Russian President Vladimir Putin are gone as he called for the immediate release of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny.
During his first visit to the State Department as president, Biden issued his strongest condemnation of Putin as large protests have broken out throughout Russia following the jailing of Navalny. Thousands of protesters have been arrested.
Navalny, an anti-corruption campaigner and Putin’s most determined political foe, was arrested Jan. 17 upon returning from a five-month convalescence in Germany from a nerve agent poisoning, which he has blamed on the Kremlin.
“I made it clear to President Putin, in a manner very different from my predecessor, that the days of the United States rolling over in the face of Russia’s aggressive actions — interfering with our election, cyberattacks, poisoning its citizens — are over,” said Biden, who last week spoke to Putin in what White House officials called a tense first exchange. “We will not hesitate to raise the cost on Russia and defend our vital interests and our people.”
Using the visit to outline how his foreign policy would differ from that of his predecessor, Biden called for a return to the “grounding wire of our global power.” He sought to buck up the diplomatic corps.
“America is back. Diplomacy is back,” Biden told State Department staff before delivering his foreign policy speech. “You are the center of all that I intend to do. You are the heart of it. We’re going to rebuild our alliances.”
Biden also announced plans to increase the cap on the number of refugees allowed into the United States to more than eight times the level at which the Trump administration left it.
Trump drastically reduced the cap to only 15,000. Biden’s plan would raise it to 125,000, surpassing the ceiling set by President Barack Obama before he left office by 15,000.