The United States has no strategy of regime change for Russia, Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters on Sunday after President Joe Biden a day earlier said Russian President Vladimir Putin “cannot remain in power”.
“I think the President, the White House made the point last night that, quite simply, President Putin cannot be empowered to wage war or engage in aggression against Ukraine or anyone else,” Blinken said at a press conference during a visit to Jerusalem.
“As you know, and as you’ve heard us say repeatedly, we do not have a strategy of regime change in Russia or anywhere else, for that matter. In this case, as in any case, it’s up to the people of the country in question. It’s up to the Russian people,” Blinken said.
In a major speech during his trip to Poland, U.S. President Joe Biden said that Russia’s leader Vladimir Putin “cannot remain in power”, remarks a White House official said later were meant to prepare the world’s democracies for extended conflict over Ukraine, not back regime change in Russia.
Those comments by Biden, including a statement earlier in the day calling Putin a “butcher,” were a sharp escalation of the U.S. approach to Moscow over its invasion of Ukraine.
In an address delivered at Warsaw’s Royal Castle. Biden evoked Poland’s four decades behind the Iron Curtain in an effort to build a case that the world’s democracies must urgently confront an autocratic Russia as a threat to global security and freedom.
A White House official said Biden’s remark that Putin cannot remain in power did not represent a shift in the position of Washington, which has avoided direct military involvement in Ukraine and has specifically said it does not back regime change.
“But what we do have is a strategy to strongly support Ukraine,” Blinken said. “We have a strategy to put unprecedented pressure on Russia, and we’re carrying that forward. And we have a strategy to make sure that we’re providing all of the humanitarian support that we can, and we have a strategy to reinforce NATO,” he added.
The U.S. envoy to NATO said on Sunday that the United States does not have a policy of regime change in Russia, in the latest effort to clarify President Joe Biden’s statement that Russian President Vladimir Putin “cannot remain in power.”
Julianne Smith sought to contextualize Biden’s remarks in Poland on Saturday, saying they followed a day of speaking with Ukrainian refugees. Russia’s month-old invasion has driven a quarter of Ukraine’s population of 44 million from their homes.
“In the moment, I think that was a principled human reaction to the stories that he had heard that day,” Smith told CNN’s “State of the Union” program before adding: “The U.S. does not have a policy of regime change in Russia. Full stop.”
Biden’s comments in Poland also included a statement earlier on Saturday calling Putin a “butcher,” and appeared to be a sharp escalation of the U.S. approach to Moscow over its invasion of Ukraine.Read full story
Senator James Risch, the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, called Biden’s remarks a “horrendous gaff” and said he wished the president would have stayed on script.
“Most people who don’t deal in the lane of foreign relations don’t realize those nine words that he uttered would cause the kind of eruption that they did,” he told CNN.
“It’s going to cause a huge problem.”
Senator Cory Booker, one of Biden’s fellow Democrats and a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, told the “Meet the Press” program on NBC News that although regime change was not the U.S. policy, he didn’t see Ukraine’s war ending well for Putin.
“I don’t see a real victory for him. His country is suffering extraordinarily. He is depleting critical resources from his own nation for this awful war. So I just don’t see how this ends well for him,” Booker said.
The United States has avoided direct military involvement in Ukraine, instead joining NATO allies in speeding weapons deliveries to Ukrainian forces to help them thwart Russia’s advance.
After more than four weeks of fighting, Russia has failed to seize any major Ukrainian city and the conflict has killed thousands of people, sent nearly 3.8 million abroad and driven more than half of Ukraine’s children from their homes, according to the United Nations.
Following are some reactions to U.S. President Joe Biden’s remark on Saturday that Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin “cannot remain in power”. Read full story
BIDEN
“For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power,” Biden told a crowd in Warsaw after condemning the Russian president’s month-long war in Ukraine. Biden cast Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as a battle in a much broader conflict between democracy and autocracy.
“The battle for democracy could not conclude and did not conclude with the end of the Cold War,” Biden said. “Over the last 30 years, the forces of autocracy have revived all across the globe.”
Official transcript of his speech.
THE KREMLIN
“That’s not for Biden to decide,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Reuters. “The president of Russia is elected by Russians.”
Peskov later told Russia’s RBC that Biden was clearly “the victim of many misconceptions”.
“This speech – and the passages which concern Russia – is astounding, to use polite words,” Peskov said. “He doesn’t understand that the world is not limited to the United States and most of Europe.”
WHITE HOUSE OFFICIAL:
“The President’s point was that Putin cannot be allowed to exercise power over his neighbours or the region,” the official said on Saturday after Biden’s speech. “He was not discussing Putin’s power in Russia, or regime change.”
FRENCH PRESIDENT EMMANUEL MACRON
“I wouldn’t use this type of wording because I continue to hold discussions with President Putin,” Macron told France 3 TV channel in remarks aired on Sunday.
The French president said he was seeking to hold more talks with Putin regarding the situation in Ukraine as well as an initiative to help people leave the besieged city of Mariupol in the coming days.
“We want to stop the war that Russia has launched in Ukraine without escalation — that’s the objective,” he added, noting the objective is to obtain a ceasefire and the withdrawal of troops through diplomatic means.
“If this is what we want to do, we should not escalate things — neither with words or actions,” he said.
RUSSIAN LAWMAKER
“This is how a weak and sick person behaves – psychiatrists will be able to explain his behaviour better,” Vyacheslav Volodin, chairman of the Duma, Russia’s lower house of parliament, said on Saturday. “American citizens should be ashamed of their president.”
