President Biden called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky “Vladimir” on Wednesday, apparently mistaking him for Russian leader and US and Ukrainian adversary Vladimir Putin.
The 80-year-old president’s latest blunder got here during his speech on the annual NATO summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, a day after Zelensky bristled after which quickly retracted that Ukraine had not received an invite to hitch the North Atlantic alliance.
“Vladimir and I…should not be so familiar” Biden said during a press conference within the Lithuanian capital, seeming to catch a couple of seconds after the slip-up.
“Mr. Zelensky and I discussed the varieties of guarantees we could make within the meantime once I was in Ukraine and after we met elsewhere,” he corrected himself, standing a couple of steps from the Ukrainian leader.
Official White House transcriptwho is normally meticulous at catching Biden’s misstatements, he didn’t this time and erroneously notes that the Commander-in-Chief said, “Wladimir.”
“Włodzimierz” and “Wladimir” are different variants of the identical name.
Each mean “ruler of the world” or “ruler of peace”, nonetheless “Wladimir” is more widely used version of the name in Ukraine.
Biden has previously committed many distortions related to the war-torn former Soviet state.
During his 2022 State of the Union address, Biden incorrectly referred to “Ukrainians” as “Iranians” when referring to President Putin’s invasion of the country in February this 12 months.
“Putin can flow into [capital city] Kiev with tanks, but it can never win the hearts and souls of the Iranian people,” Biden said.
In 2022, he also by accident said that Russian troops are withdrawing from “Fallujah” – the positioning of a serious battle during the Iraq War – with the intention of referring to town of Kherson in southeastern Ukraine.
As recently as last month, Biden confused Ukraine and Iraq twice in 12 hours.
In a single instance, he told reporters on the White House lawn that “[Putin’s] clearly lost the war in Iraq.”
During one other gaffe at a fundraiser the night before, he made the same mistake.
“Give it some thought,” Biden said.
“If someone had told you – and my staff wasn’t so sure either – that we’d have the opportunity to unite all of Europe in an attack on Iraq and achieve complete NATO unification, I feel they’d have told you that it’s unlikely.”
Biden, the oldest president in U.S. history, announced in April that he would run for re-election in 2024, despite growing questions on his mental fitness.
If re-elected, the president would have turned 86 at the top of his second term.
Biden raised his eyebrows on Tuesday as he missed the opening dinner of the NATO leaders summit, with White House staff citing his busy work week.