Warsaw / New York When the foreign minister has to correct the president the next morning, it’s clear that something is wrong with communication. But that is exactly what happened: On Saturday evening in Warsaw, US President Joe Biden allegedly called for an end to the rule of Russian President Vladimir Putin in his speech in Warsaw: “For God’s sake, this man cannot stay in power,” he said at the end of his visit to Poland. And on Sunday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken made it clear at a press conference in Jerusalem that Biden had not called for regime change.
Since Saturday evening, governments, diplomats and commentators around the world have been puzzling over whether the US President called for regime change in Moscow in his speech, whether the statement was just a blunder or whether it was planned. It was obviously not in the speech transcript. “We have no strategy for regime change in Russia or anywhere else,” Blinken said in Jerusalem. “In this case, as in all cases, it is in the hands of the people of the respective country. It is in the hands of the Russian people,” he said.
As late as Saturday evening, following Biden’s remarks, the White House felt compelled to clarify that the President had not called for regime change in Russia in his speech. When he said “Putin cannot remain in power,” the US President meant that he should not exercise power over neighboring countries or the region, a spokesman for the US Presidential Office said. Biden did not speak about Putin’s power in Russia.
Just a few hours before Biden’s speech, Russian rockets and artillery had struck the heaviest hits to date against Lviv in western Ukraine, just 340 kilometers away – where hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians had fled and from where many media representatives are reporting.
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In his speech, Biden also prepared the world for a long conflict over the future international order. It is about a “great battle between democracy and autocracy, between freedom and oppression, between a rule-based order and one that is determined by brute force,” said Biden on Saturday evening. “We have to be clear about this: This battle will not be fought in days or in months. We have to steel ourselves for a long fight.”
In a row with Barack Obama
In his speech, Biden warned the Kremlin chief in no uncertain terms: “Don’t even think about it,” he literally cried out at that moment, “walking a single centimeter into NATO territory.” These two announcements are a clear intensification of the confrontation towards Russia.
Biden calls Putin a ‘butcher’
Biden is thus in line with his predecessor Barack Obama: In August 2012, he threatened the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad with a military strike if he used chemical weapons. Obama had also questioned Assad’s staying in power. Three years later, Russia sided with Assad in the Syrian war and used its massive airstrikes to regain power for the dictator against the rebels. They had previously held large parts of the Levant state.
Biden drew this red line on the border of NATO territory. But in the Ukraine war, Russia comes dangerously close to the border with Poland and thus with the western alliance. “Putin is a player who appeals very highly and who can be trusted to do anything,” Ukrainian Deputy Foreign Minister Emine Dschaparowa told the Handelsblatt at the Doha Forum in Qatar. Like Biden, she warned against the use of Russian chemical weapons in her country.
A few days ago, the US President had announced violent counter-reactions from the West in this case – without describing them exactly.
Kremlin angered by Biden remarks
Immediately after Biden’s speech, Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov made it clear how angry the Russian leadership is at Biden’s labeling of Putin as a “butcher”: These “personal insults always close the window of opportunity for our bilateral relations under the current government,” he said Kremlin spokesman for the Russian news agency Tass.
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Biden makes statements and mistakes with “terrifying regularity” that are worse than crimes, said the prominent Russian foreign politician Konstantin Kosachev. The Russian head of parliament Vyacheslav Volodin accused the US President of “undiplomatic statements” and “hysteria”. “Biden is weak, sick and unhappy,” Volodin commented on Telegram. “US citizens should be ashamed of their President. Maybe he’s sick. It would be right if Biden were to be medically examined.” Putin, on the other hand, deserves respect for his “restraint”.
Political observers at the Doha Forum, a leading global foreign policy conference, also expressed concern that a battered and weakened Putin might become even more dangerous and unpredictable.
Because after the repeated military setbacks in his attack on Ukraine, the Russian President is coming under increasing pressure and could attempt a dangerous liberation: “Is Russia’s hunger really satisfied with Ukraine?” asked the Ukrainian President Volodymyr, who was connected via video to Doha Selenski and warned of a Russian use of nuclear or chemical weapons.
Biden also made it clear to Russia that “you, the Russian people, are not our enemy”. But he went dangerously far with his direct verbal attack on Putin. Richard Haass, President of the Council on Foreign Relations, tweeted his concern that Biden had made regime change a war goal. “As desirable as that may be, it is not in our power to achieve this — besides, we risk that Putin will see it even more as an endgame and will refuse to compromise and escalate,” Haass wrote.
Refugees should be the responsibility of the whole of NATO
Biden’s visit to Poland also addressed the issue of refugees. The US President thanked the refugees from Ukraine for accepting them. “We recognize that Poland is taking on a great responsibility, which I believe should not only concern Poland. It should be the responsibility of the whole world, of all NATO,” said the US President.
“We understand the fact that so many Ukrainians are seeking refuge in Poland, because we have thousands of people on our southern border who (…) try to get to the United States every day.”
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According to US President Biden, the Russian economy will “halve” in the coming years because of the tough Western sanctions. Before the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine, Russia was the eleventh largest economy in the world, soon Russia will hardly be among the 20 largest, said Biden in Warsaw on Saturday at the end of a two-day visit to Poland.
The sanctions are said to be so effective that they compete with “military power”. The economic costs are also undermining the Russian military, Biden said. “As a result of these unprecedented sanctions, the ruble was reduced to rubble almost immediately,” he said, referring to the dramatic devaluation of Russia’s national currency. “The economy is poised to be halved in the coming years,” Biden said.
With agency material
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