“For God’s sake, this man (Mr. Putin) cannot stay in power,” Mr. Biden said last week.
“For God’s sake, this man (Mr. Putin) cannot stay in power,” Mr. Biden said last week.
US President Joe Biden said on Monday his weekend remarks in Europe that his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin “cannot stay in power” There was a moral outcry for his invasion of Ukraine, and it did not reflect any change in US policy regarding regime change.
As such Mr Biden refused to apologize for his comments, on which their administration is having a hard time explaining In the last few days.
“I’m not holding anything back. The fact is, I was expressing the moral outrage I felt about the way Putin is behaving… which is just cruelty, half of Ukraine’s children. . I just came from living with those families,” Mr. Biden told reporters at the White House.
“But I want to make it clear that I was not then and I am not talking about policy change now. I was expressing the moral outrage I feel and I make no apologies for that,” he Asked about his remarks in Europe last week, where he went to sideline his allies and show solidarity with the people of Ukraine.
“For God’s sake, this man (Mr. Putin) cannot stay in power,” Mr. Biden said last week.
Responding to questions, Mr Biden said Mr Putin’s escalating efforts to engage in genocide … “the kind of behavior that makes the whole world say, oh my god, what is this guy doing?”
“He (Mr. Putin) is going to be a cripple around the world and who knows what he becomes at home in terms of support,” the US president said.
Further pressured by reporters, Mr. Biden said regime change is not American policy. “They should stay in power like you know, bad guys shouldn’t do bad things. But that doesn’t mean we have a fundamental policy of doing anything to bring Putin down in any way.”
Mr Biden said when he made the remarks, he was talking to the Russian people. “The last part of the speech was talking to the Russian people about what we think. I was telling this thing not only to the Russian people, but to the whole world. It just sums up the simple fact that this kind of behavior is totally unacceptable,” he said.
“Totally unacceptable. The way to deal with this is to keep NATO completely united and help Ukraine where we can,” he said.
Mr Biden said the last thing he wanted was a “land or nuclear war with the Russians”. He told reporters that Mr Putin’s behavior had changed since their last meeting in Geneva.
“Their behavior changed. When we met I remembered what we are talking about. We are talking about establishing a strategic dialogue and NATO relations in Russia, and facing areas , and how can we get more transparency and everything else. It was a general discussion that I was having going back to Kosygin and others 100 years ago, when I was a young senator,” he said.
“And so, what changed was nothing remotely coming. Remember when we first met, he said I had two purposes, this is the second or third time I met him. He said that I have two objectives. One is to ensure that they never become part of NATO, and the other is to ensure that Ukraine does not have long-range missiles, ”said the US President.
“I said that we can easily deal with the second, but we can’t close the door to the first, because when we talk about missiles, we want to talk about Europe’s border with Russia. And what is happening, do both. And then if you see that his demand list, well, not with me, with others, he has grown tremendously in terms of what is needed,” Mr. Biden said.