NEW YORK, August 19. /TASS/. Chaos was unavoidable following the US decision to withdraw from Afghanistan, President Joe Biden said in an interview with ABC News.
"No, I don't think it could have been handled in a way that, we're gonna go back in hindsight and look — but the idea that somehow, there's a way to have gotten out without chaos ensuing, I don't know how that happens. I don't know how that happened," Biden said.
"When you had the government of Afghanistan, the leader of that government, get in a plane and taking off and going to another country; when you saw the significant collapse of the Afghan troops we had trained, up to 300,000 of them, just leaving their equipment and taking off — that was, you know, I'm not, that's what happened," he added.
"I had a simple choice. If I said, 'we're gonna stay,' then we'd better be prepared to put a whole lot hell of a lot more troops in," Biden said.
On April 14, Biden announced plans to end Washington’s operation in Afghanistan, the longest military campaign in American history. On August 15, fighters of the Taliban (outlawed in Russia) entered Afghanistan’s capital of Kabul and took control of the entire city within a few hours. Later, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani announced he was stepping down and then fled the country. At present, Western nations are evacuating their citizens and embassy staff.