Former United States President Joe Biden has told the BBC that pressure from the Trump administration on Ukraine to give up territory to Russia is “modern-day appeasement.”
Speaking in Delaware on Monday in an exclusive interview, his first since leaving the White House, Biden said Russian President Vladimir Putin believed Ukraine was part of Russia and “anybody that thinks he’s going to stop if some territory is conceded as part of a peace deal is just foolish.”
Discussing Putin, Biden said: “I just don’t understand how people think that if we allow a dictator, a thug, to decide he’s going to take significant portions of land that aren’t his, that that’s going to satisfy him. I don’t quite understand.”
Biden, who spoke as Allied nations mark the 80th anniversary of VE Day this week, said he was concerned about US-Europe relations breaking down under President Donald Trump, which he said “would change the modern history of the world.”
In a wide-ranging interview with BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Biden was challenged on his own record on Ukraine as well as his decision to end his 2024 re-election bid late in the race after a stumbling debate performance stoked concerns over his fitness and plunged the Democratic Party into crisis.
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Biden dropped out less than four months before the November election, and when pushed on whether he should have left sooner and allowed more time for a replacement to be chosen, he said: “I don’t think it would have mattered. We left at a time when we had a good candidate.
“Things moved so quickly that it made it difficult to walk away. And it was a hard decision. I think it was the right decision. I think that… it was just a difficult decision.”
Asked about the current administration’s treatment of US allies, the former president condemned Trump’s calls for the US to take back the Panama Canal, to acquire Greenland and to make Canada the 51st state.
“What the hell’s going on here? What president ever talks like that? That’s not who we are,” he said. “We’re about freedom, democracy, opportunity, not about confiscation.”
