The US President Joe Biden said that his Russian peer, Vladimir Putin, “cannot remain in power”, in the first time that Washington calls for a change of government in Russia due to the war in Ukraine.
The US President Joe Biden said today that his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, “cannot remain in power”, although later the White House assured that it was not asking for a change of government in Russia.
“For God’s sake, this man cannot stay in power,” Biden said in a speech at the Warsaw Royal Palace, where between 750 and 1,000 people gathered.
After the speech, a senior White House official, who requested anonymity, wanted to qualify those words and assured that Biden did not want to refer to Putin’s power in Russia or the possibility of “regime change.”
“The point that the president wanted to underline is that Putin cannot be allowed to exercise his power over his neighbors in the region,” said that source.
Biden called Putin a “dictator”
Biden’s speech was plagued with accusations once morest Putin, whom he described as a “dictator”, and considered “obscene” his allegations that the invasion of Ukraine tries to “denazify” that country.
“Putin has the nerve to say that he is denazifying Ukraine. It’s a lie, he’s cynical, he knows it. He is also obscene,” said Biden, who considered that “there is simply no justification” for the decision that Russia has made to wage war in Ukraine.
He also considered that the war in Ukraine has become a “strategic failure for Russia” in its first month and has caused the ruble to be reduced to “rubble” with a large drop in its value.
Biden to the Russian people: “You don’t deserve this war”
Addressing the Russian people, Biden affirmed that they “are not the enemy” of the United States and that all the “blame” falls on Putin, whom he accused of having returned his country “to the 19th century.”
“You, the Russian people, do not deserve this war,” said Biden, who assured that it cannot be believed that the Russians agree with the murder of “innocent” children and the elderly.
The US president began and ended his speech with references to the Polish Pope John Paul II and repeated his famous phrase on several occasions: “Do not be afraid.”