Biden on whether Trump would have informed Putin about the coup plan: “Oh, God”

On Thursday, US Vice President Joe Biden said that his government was “ahead of time” aware of the uprising against Russian President Vladimir Putin. In what Fox News referred to as a “softball interview,” Biden briefly discussed Yevgeny Prigozhin’s mutiny against Putin last week and his spectacular U-turn within 24 hours with MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace.

Biden stated, “We knew things ahead of time,” but he wouldn’t elaborate when asked what the US knew about the Russian uprising.

“Did you worry that Trump might have tipped him off, had he still been president?” Wallace retorted. She reportedly wanted to know whether Trump had informed Russian President Vladimir Putin about the mercenary leader’s intentions to revolt against the country’s military commanders.

Oh, God, said Biden. “I’m not sure. I don’t consider that very often.

Former US President Donald Trump cultivated cordial ties with Vladimir Putin throughout his time in office. Trump said on Thursday that an attempted mutiny had “somewhat weakened” the Russian president and that it is now time for the United States to attempt to mediate a negotiated peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine.

“You could say that (Putin) is still there, he’s still strong, but he certainly has been, I would say somewhat weakened at least in the minds of a lot of people,” Trump said in a telephone interview with Reuters.

However, if Putin lost his position of authority, “you don’t know what the alternative is. It may be worse, but it might also be better, he remarked.

When the head of the Wagner Group rebelled against the senior leadership, Putin faced one of his toughest tasks as Russian president. After being told to put his organisation under the authority of the defence ministry, which he has portrayed as ineffective in the battle in Ukraine, Prigozhin stated that the violent uprising was necessary to defend his organisation.