Biden: We're Trying To Figure Out How Putin Can Exit This War

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The president of the United States made headlines the other day by just casually mentioning "Armageddon" as a possible outcome of the rapidly escalating war in Ukraine. 

“We have not faced the prospect of Armageddon since Kennedy and the Cuban missile crisis,” President Biden said, adding the false claim that Vladimir Putin "talks about potential use of tactical nuclear weapons or biological or chemical weapons" in this conflict.

“First time since the Cuban missile crisis, we have the threat of a nuclear weapon if in fact things continue down the path they are going,” the president said in the same speech. “We are trying to figure out what is Putin’s off-ramp? Where does he find a way out? Where does he find himself where he does not only lose face but significant power?”

As though the US government itself has not played a major role in both provoking and sustaining this extremely dangerous conflict.

World Socialist Web Site @WSWS_Updates

Biden continued: “We are trying to figure out: What is Putin’s off ramp? Where does he find a way out? Where does he find himself where he does not only lose face but significant power?” These are questions that Biden should ask himself.

wsws.orgBiden warns: Prepare for nuclear ArmageddonThe <i>New York Times</i> reports that President Biden told a group of billionaires at a fundraising event last night:“We have not faced the prospect of Armageddon since Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis.”

"These are questions that Biden should ask himself," World Socialist Website's David North writes of Biden's musings. "Having instigated the US-NATO proxy war, provided Ukraine with unlimited weapons and money, pledged the reconquest of Crimea, and called for regime change in Russia, what is Biden’s 'off ramp'? How can he deescalate 'where he does not only lose face but significant power?'"

Indeed it is simply a well-documented fact that the US has been aggressively pushing toward this conflict since it backed a coup in Ukraine in 2014, and really since 2008 when NATO membership for Ukraine was placed on the table and continually promoted by the United States right up until shortly before Russia's February invasion. Which is why all the way back in 2015 John Mearsheimer was explicitly warning that “the west is leading Ukraine down the primrose path, and the end result is that Ukraine is going to get wrecked.”

There's also an abundance of evidence that the western empire actively sabotaged a peace deal between Moscow and Kyiv in the early days of the war, which would have given Putin precisely the "off-ramp" which Biden feigns concern about with Bambi-eyed innocence. 

It's also entirely self-evident that the only reason this war is even happening is because the US and its allies are pouring tens of billions of dollars worth of weaponry into this conflict which are being used by CIA-trained fighters who are aided by US intelligence and by an alarming number of US special operations and intelligence forces with boots on the ground in Ukraine.

So when Biden says "We are trying to figure out what is Putin’s off-ramp," one is easily reminded of the "We're all trying to find the guy who did this" hot dog car sketch from I Think You Should Leave.

Empire apologists always pretend this is just a war between Russia and Ukraine like there isn't a gigantic globe-spanning third party who's been actively stoking this conflict for many years and has moved mountains to keep this war going. We see it every day, like just recently when Finnish prime minister Sanna Marin was asked for ideas on how this war can end.

"The way out of the conflict is for Russia to leave Ukraine," Marin said.

Actor Mark Ruffalo shared Marin's comments on Twitter, saying "It’s so simple. Russia, leave Ukraine and it’s over. World peace. Ukraine can’t leave Ukraine. Russia can always go back to Russia."

This is a constant throughout mainstream discourse about this war: this is solely a conflict between the righteous defender Ukraine and the evil invader Russia, and exactly zero other world powers at all. Russia is the sole aggressor involved in this war, so all Russia needs to do is stop aggressing and it will end. Pay no attention to the mountains of aggression the US and its client states have poured into sparking and sustaining this war. Pay no attention to that empire behind the curtain.

"So simple," Ruffalo says.

If the political/media class always talks about a major world event without ever mentioning the empire-sized elephant in the room, there's a good change we are being propagandized by that empire.

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