Pompeo: Putin Saw American Weakness in Afghanistan, He’s ‘Perfectly Prepared to Push the Biden Admin to the Edge’

EXCERPT:

POMPEO: "Well, Vladimir Putin has been on the stage for an awfully long time. He knows full well that Latvia, Estonia, they are not going to invade Russia. He knows this. It’s victimization to assert somehow that he feels threatened from those countries for an invasion. He’s the one that's raised the tension. That fault lies with him. But there’s fault in the Biden administration, too. When Putin saw what happened in Afghanistan, the terrible tragedy of 13 Americans being killed and real weakness being shown. When we gave him the opportunity to finish his pipeline, to have energy control over Germany, he saw American weakness. And so I think what you’ve seen over these past days and weeks is him building and putting pressure on the Americans, looking for concessions, trying to achieve something through threats and coercion that he doesn’t want to do militarily. But he’s perfectly prepared to push the Biden administration to the edge to see if he can’t get what he would really like."