Joe Biden’s gaffes at the NATO summit have ruined months of hard work, diplomatic officials have claimed.
The US president had hoped to salvage what remains of his re-election campaign amid mounting calls to stand aside after a poor TV debate against Republican rival Donald Trump in June.
But the leader of the free world stunned his audience at a meeting of the NATO-Ukraine council on Thursday (July 11) by referring to Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky as Russian president Vladimir Putin, before correcting himself. At a later news conference, he slipped up again, calling his Vice President, Kamala Harris, “Vice President Trump”.
NATO leaders did their best to ignore or sidestep questions about Mr Biden’s performance, instead trying to talk up his leadership and the military alliance’s unity in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
French President Emmanuel Macron and UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer were asked repeatedly about the Putin gaffe but declined to answer directly.
Mr Macron said: “We can all have a slip of the tongue. It’s happened to me. I’m sure it will happen to me again tomorrow, and I’d ask you to be just as kind to me.”
While officials defended Mr Biden publicly, diplomatic sources speaking on condition of anonymity have told the Telegraph the gaffes ruined months of hard work and undermined the summit.
Sources told the publication the gaffes will have displaced stories about their successes with the president’s gaffes knocking NATO off the front pages. Mr Biden’s mistakenly identifying Ukraine’s president as Putin also made it to the top of TV news in Russia.
One told the Telegraph: “It’s taken the focus away from what has been a great summit for us.”
“The Americans had put in months of groundwork into preventing another ‘Vilnius moment’,” another source told the outlet referring to comments by Zelensky at last year’s summit after being refused an invitation.
A possible Trump presidency, Mr Biden’s infirmity and how Mr Zelensky would act all hung over the summit. Mr Trump has repeatedly questioned NATO’s relevance and suggested he might either withdraw from the alliance or refuse to defend allies who do not meet the grouping’s two percent defence spending commitments.
Outgoing NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said he wasn’t concerned about the US commitment to the alliance if Mr Trump returns to the White House as it has bipartisan support in Congress and a record number of allies are hitting their military spending goals.
Mr Zelensky embraced the support of allies who have provided new military aid and a path to joining NATO. He pushed for help to arrive faster and for restrictions to be lifted on the use of US weapons to attack military targets inside Russia.
The Ukrainian president said: “If we want to win, if we want to prevail, if we want to save our country and to defend it, we need to lift all the limitations.”
Mr Biden said at his news conference he is the “best-qualified person” to make sure the 32-member transatlantic alliance remains strong and Ukraine does not fall to Putin.
He said: “Foreign policy has never been his strong point and he seems to have an affinity to people who are authoritarian. That worries Europe, that worries Poland, and nobody, including the people of Poland, think if (Putin) wins in Ukraine, he’s going to stop in Ukraine.”
