Prices were surging long before Russian troops entered Ukraine. Furthermore, Putin did not stop exporting food and gas; it was the Biden administration and Congress that imposed sanctions, making US consumers suffer additional price increases. The blame for the economic effects lies with the US government, not Russia.

The United States has for years been meddling in Ukraine's affairs with the explicit goal of moving US and NATO military forces ever closer to Russia. The most notorious example was the 2014 US-orchestrated coup that overthrew Ukraine's democratically elected government.

Russia has a legitimate grievance over the US supporting expanding NATO to include Ukraine, despite the US having promised not to support expanding NATO beyond Germany's borders during negotiations over how to end the Cold War. Foreign policy experts, including George Kennan, the architect of the Cold war "containment" strategy, warned that Russia would respond adversely to NATO expansion near Russia.

Before the Ukraine conflict, Biden and his fellow Democrats blamed price increases on "greedy" corporations, going so far as to claim that increasing antitrust prosecutions would somehow bring down prices. Then Putin became the new excuse.