US President Joe Biden said Wednesday Russian President Vladimir Putin is in an "incredibly difficult position" in Ukraine and has run out of options beyond trying to "brutalize" civilians into surrender.
"I think that Vladimir Putin finds himself in an incredibly difficult position," Biden told reporters at the White House. "It seems his only tool available is to brutalize individual citizens of Ukraine, Ukrainian citizens, to try to intimidate them into capitulating. They're not going to do that."
Biden's remarks came hours after Putin signed a decree on the introduction of martial law in the Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia regions -- recently annexed from Ukraine.
Kyiv's forces have made advances in recent weeks, while Moscow called up more reservists and launched new attacks in Ukraine, including that nation's capital of Kyiv, following an explosion on a strategic bridge linking Russia to Crimea, which it illegally annexed in 2014.
