Following President Joe Biden's comment that Russian President Vladimir Putin "cannot remain in power," reports say that the Russian leader fears removal from the U.S.
Julia Ioffe, a founding partner and Washington correspondent for Puck, shared with MSNBC her thoughts on how Putin saw the remark from President Biden over the weekend.
Ioffe shared that Russia has been fed a narrative for some time now that the U.S. is looking to overthrow the regime currently in place. She said the rhetoric has gone so far that Putin believes it himself.
"This goes back to the days of George W. Bush and the freedom agenda and what the U.S. did in Afghanistan and Iraq," Ioffe said.
She said that Putin has viewed the actions of the U.S. over the last two decades and thinks that it is "ousting leaders it doesn't like."
"[Putin] assumes he's next in line," Ioffe told MSNBC.
The comment from Biden was the lead in almost every Russian newspaper over the last three days, MSNBC reported, and Ioffe thinks they are using the comment to prove the conspiracy that the U.S. is looking to overthrow the government in Moscow.
Ioffe shared that she doesn't think there has even been any talk about going into Russia and overthrowing Putin. White House officials were quick to back this up almost as soon as Biden made his comment, adding that it was unscripted and not policy.
Even still, the Kremlin responded with its own statement, saying that Russia's ruler is "not to be decided by Mr. Biden."
Ioffe said that she believes that since Biden took office, his administration has expected there to be little to no constructive talks or change with Russia as long as Putin is in office.
Still, they have no plans to remove him but rather "do the bare minimum to keep that relationship going."
"I just saw the comment by President Biden in some ways a statement of fact and a statement of longstanding policy," Ioffe said. "Which is that as long as Putin is in power, he's killing two countries, Russia and Ukraine, and no constructive policy is possible with him."
