When President Joe Biden agreed with a newscaster that Vladimir Putin was “a killer,” I initially thought it a tactical error.
Not that the Russian leader isn’t a killer, having sent agents to murder dissidents abroad and to poison opposition leader Alexei Navalny at home — not to mention the murders of scores of other Russian activists and journalists on his watch.
Yet I thought it preferable to confront Putin in private, letting him know that, unlike Donald Trump, Biden and U.S. allies rejected the Russian’s fake denials. That way, necessary business could still be done with Moscow, but in a no-nonsense, no-illusions fashion.
