On Wednesday, in a slip of tongue, the US President Joe Biden referred to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as "Vladimir", which is the name of Russian President Vladimir Putin. The gaffe was made during his speech at the annual NATO Summit in Vilnius, Lithuania.
This is just a day after the NATO states said that Ukraine could join the military alliance only "when allies agree and conditions are met" after President Volodymyr Zelensky criticised the "absurd" delay to their accession into the North Atlantic Alliance.
Though he promptly corrected the mistake, not many seemed happy with what happened. Notably, this is not the first time that the US president erred during his speech on the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
During the press conference in Lithuania, Biden is seen saying, "'Vladimir' and I..(stutters)..I shouldn't be so familiar,"
He corrected the error and continued, "Mr Zelenskyy and I talked about the kind of guarantees we could make in the meantime when I was in Ukraine and when we met in other places."
Interestingly, 'Volodymyr' and 'Vladimir' are simply different variants of the same name.
Earlier blunders on Ukraine by Biden
Just last month, the US president had confused Ukraine with Iraq, twice. Once he stated to reporters, "Putin is clearly losing the war in Iraq."
Earlier in 2022, during another address Biden had said, "Putin may circle Kyiv with tanks, but he will never gain the hearts and souls of the Iranian people," Biden had said. Here he mistook people of Ukraine with Iranians.
NATO Summit
During the NATO summit, a wide-ranging security pact with G7 members, was signed by Ukraine, with provisions regarding security to Ukraine. Zelenskyy was initially angry over the delay to their accession into the alliance. But by the end of the meeting he said, "We have put to rest any doubts and ambiguities about whether Ukraine will be in Nato - it will."
Meanwhile, some fear that the delay in Ukraine's accession into NATO, might lead to Russia prolonging the war further.
