An upcoming book by renowned reporter Bob Woodward reportedly reveals how the Biden-Harris team placed blame on the Obama administration for the onset of the war in Ukraine with Russia. An excerpt from Woodward’s upcoming book, War, obtained by Axios and CNN, provides insights from those present with President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken as they discussed the reasons behind Russia’s decision to invade Ukraine.
Sources who spoke with Woodward about a July 4th meeting between the two noted that both were focused on the political risks Biden faced after a disastrous debate against former President Donald Trump. What began as a book documenting the Ukraine War has expanded to include Israel’s conflict with Hamas and the overall burden of the presidency in addressing international conflicts.
In his near-real-time history, Woodward provides insights into Biden’s inner circle that would typically remain confidential for decades. After covering and documenting ten administrations, the former Watergate journalist has built a network of sources who have shared some of Biden’s recent frustrations with former President Barack Obama.
Among these revelations is Biden’s admission to an advisor that Obama “never took Putin seriously,” referencing Russia’s 2014 invasion of Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsula that the Russian president claims is part of his country’s original homeland. Although Obama imposed sanctions against Russia with bipartisan support, he ultimately refrained from using military force to prevent the invasion.
In contrast, Biden and his team suggested there was up to a 50% chance that Putin would resort to using nuclear weapons following the invasion of Ukraine. Publicly, the administration contends that the conflict has “weakened” the long-time adversary. Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines informed the White House’s National Security Council this spring that Putin is estimated to have incurred around 200,000 military casualties and spent $200 billion on the war, according to Axios.
Complicating the situation was the unusual camaraderie between Putin and former President Donald Trump. The two strongman leaders publicly praised each other in their remarks, while the Biden-Harris administration asserted—without evidence—that they had spoken as many as seven times since Trump left office. Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Trump, denied that the Republican granted Woodward any special access to his life after leaving office. “None of these fabricated stories by Bob Woodward are true,” he stated in a comment to CNN. In his own memoir, President Obama looked back on his tumultuous relationship with Putin, comparing him to a sharp-elbowed political “ward boss” in his native Chicago.
On the international stage, the Democrat wrote in 2020, Putin was “like a ward [district] boss, except with nukes and a UN Security Council veto,” the BBC reported. “Putin did, in fact, remind me of the sorts of men who had once run the Chicago machine or Tammany Hall [a New York City political organization] – tough, street-smart, unsentimental characters who knew what they knew, who never moved outside their narrow experiences, and who viewed patronage, bribery, shakedowns, fraud, and occasional violence as legitimate tools of the trade.”
