Declaring on Saturday, to everyone’s surprise, that Vladimir Putin “cannot stay in power,” Joe Biden He blurred the message of his tour of Europe, intended to show the unity of the allies once morest Russia and contain the conflict in Ukraine.
“For the love of God, this man cannot remain in power,” said the US president in Warsaw, who a few hours earlier had called his Russian counterpart a “butcher.”
These statements, at the end of a 27-minute speech in which he had weighed every word to prevent an escalation of tensions on NATO’s eastern flank, took the president’s entourage by surprise, because they seemed to mark a turning point in the recent US foreign policy of not calling for regime change in the world.
Biden blurs the US message on Ukraine
“What the president meant is that Putin cannot be allowed to exercise power over his neighbors or the region,” the White House clarified minutes later. “He wasn’t talking regarding Putin’s power in Russia, or regime change.”
On Sunday, it was the head of US diplomacy, Antony Blinken, who tried to clarify Biden’s statements. The president wanted to emphasize that “Putin cannot be allowed to launch a war, or an aggression once morest Ukraine or any other country,” he said.
“As you have heard us repeat, we do not have a regime change strategy in Russia or anywhere else.”
The choice of Russia’s leader “is up to the Russians,” Blinken said.
But evil was done.
French President Emmanuel Macron warned once morest “an escalation of words and actions in Ukraine.”
“I would not use these kinds of terms because I am still talking to President Putin,” Macron said on Sunday. “We want to stop the war that Russia has launched in Ukraine without going to war. That is the goal.”
“Big mistake”
Several US lawmakers and experts have found this statement by Biden counterproductive at a time when Washington’s entire strategy is to prevent Vladimir Putin from feeling “provoked” and extending the conflict beyond Ukraine, with the risk of a direct confrontation, potentially nuclear, with the United States and its NATO allies.
Republican Senator Jim Risch said Biden’s speech, delivered at the end of an emotional day in Poland that included a meeting with Ukrainian refugees, was a “good speech.” “But there was a big mistake at the end,” he added Sunday on CNN television.
“This administration has gone to great lengths to prevent any escalation. There’s not much more you can do to escalate than call for regime change,” he said.
For former US diplomat Richard Haass, Vladimir “Putin will consider this as a confirmation of what he has believed from the beginning.” Biden “made a difficult situation more difficult and even more dangerous, a dangerous situation,” said Haass, who chairs the Council on Foreign Relations think tank.
Others judged that the words of the US president should be received with nuances.
Biden “spoke what billions of people around the world and millions more in Russia are thinking,” former US ambassador to Moscow Michael McFaul tweeted. “He did not say that the United States should remove him from power. There is a difference”.
François Heisbourg of the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) said neither Biden’s comments nor Antony Blinken’s efforts to correct them had been constructive.
“People always talk too much,” Heisbourg tweeted. “Why do Joe and Tony feel the need to vent when they’d better refrain at this point in the war?” he asked.
