"And the - and the by-product - and I said at the time, when we decided we were going to help Ukraine, the point that I was making was that it’s going to cost us too. It’s going to cost the western countries. It’s going to cost NATO. It’s going to cost the European countries and cost us. Because you know what was going to happen: The cost of gasoline and oil was going to go up, and the cost of food was going to go up," Biden said in his somewhat tangled remarks at a reception for the Democratic National Committee, published by the White House on Saturday.
Biden emphasised that Ukraine and Russia account for a major portion of wheat and corn on the world market and one of the ways to tackle inflation is to ensure safe access to grain and fertiliser, which would lower the cost of food.
"And we’re trying to bring down the price of gas, keep it from going up as rapidly as it is. I was able to release a million barrels a day from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and convince our allies to come up with another 240 million barrels a day - 240 million barrels, so that it kept the price from going up further," Biden said adding, nonetheless, that "we’re going to live with this inflation for a while. It’s going to come down gradually, but we’re going to live with it for a while".
On Friday, Biden said that Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine - launched in February , after the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics (DPR and LPR) appealed to Moscow for help in defending themselves against shelling from Ukraine - was to blame for rising food and gas prices in the US and elsewhere.
After the operation started, western countries and their allies rolled out a comprehensive campaign of sanctions against Moscow, which backfired heavily on their economies, leading to a significant rise in petrol - among other things.