By Jeff Mason and Steve Holland
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. President Joe Biden on Monday said a brief uprising by Russian mercenaries against the Kremlin was part of a struggle within the Russian system and the United States and its allies were not involved in it.
“We made clear we were not involved, we had nothing to do with this,” Biden said in his first comments on the uprising by Wagner mercenaries that fizzled over the weekend.
At a White House event, Biden addressed the dramatic power struggle that erupted over the weekend when the mutineers barreled toward Moscow only to stop before reaching the capital.
Biden said he had directed his national security team to update him on the situation “hour by hour” and to prepare for a range of scenarios, which he did not detail.
Russian intelligence services were investigating whether Western spy agencies played a role in the aborted mutiny, the TASS news agency quoted Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov as saying on Monday.
The U.S. intelligence community “was aware” that the mutiny orchestrated by Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin’s mutiny “was a possibility” and briefed Congress “accordingly” before it began, said a source familiar with the issue, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Biden said he spoke with key allies on a video conference to make sure everyone was on the same page and coordinated in their response.
“They agreed with me that we had to make sure that we gave (Russian President Vladimir) Putin no excuse – gave Putin no excuse – to blame this on the West and blame this on NATO,” he said.
Biden, who spoke to Ukraine President Volodomyr Zelinskiy on Sunday, said he would be speaking to him again later on Monday or Tuesday morning to make sure they were “on the same page”.
He also planned to speak later with the leader of another ally whose name he did not disclose.
He said he and his team would continue assessing the fallout from the incident.
“It’s still too early to reach a definitive conclusion about where this is going,” he added.
He said his message to allies was “it’s important that we stay completely coordinated”.
(Reporting by Jeff Mason and Steve Holland; Additional reporting by Jonathan Landay, Phil Stewart, Kanishka Singh and Trevor Hunnicutt; Editing by Mark Porter, Alistair Bell and Alex Richardson)
