Explained: The fallout of US president Joe Biden’s Putin ‘cannot stay in power’ remark

US president Joe Biden’s speech about the Russian invasion of Ukraine, at the Royal Castle in Warsaw has angered the Kremlin. AP

United States president Joe Biden is not mincing words when it comes to attacking his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin over the war in Ukraine. But he probably took things too far on Saturday, when he declared that Putin should not remain in power.

“For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power,” Biden announced at the conclusion of an address to Polish government officials and dignitaries at the Royal Castle in Warsaw.

The line was not in the American president’s prepared speech. The remarks were impromptu and they’ve put the world on edge.

Even as Biden left Poland to return to Washington, his unscripted words have created a stir with the White House facing grave questions. The US administration hurried to course-correct. “The President’s point was that Putin cannot be allowed to exercise power over his neighbours or the region,” a White House official said to CNN. “He was not discussing Putin’s power in Russia, or regime change.”

Biden has slammed Putin time and again over the last one month, but it’s his comments on Saturday that has snowballed into a major controversy. The remark earned Moscow’s ire, raised eyebrows among allied countries, and even sent the president’s men scrambling to undo the damage.

After the American president returned to Washington, he clarified that he was not calling for a change in regime in Russia. But that was not enough to placate Moscow.

How did the Kremlin react?

The Kremlin is enraged. “This speech – and the passages which concern Russia – is astounding, to use polite words,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, according to BBC. “He (Putin) doesn’t understand that the world is not limited to the United States and most of Europe.”

Talking to reporters on Monday, Peskov said, “This is a statement that is certainly alarming,” adding that Moscow will “continue closely monitoring” statements of the US president.

The Kremlin also said that the “personal insults” further undermined relations between the US and Russia.

What allies have to say

French president Emmanuel Macron, a close US ally who has spoken frequently with Putin since the invasion, warned the West not to “escalate in words or actions” or risk hampering vital humanitarian efforts, including hopes of evacuating the devastated city of Mariupol.

Macron further cautioned against the use of inflammatory language in a situation which is already volatile. He said on Sunday that he would not have used Biden’s words, adding that he saw his task as “achieving first a ceasefire and then the total withdrawal of troops by diplomatic means”.

“If we want to do that, we can’t escalate in either words or actions,” he told broadcaster France 3.

Republicans slam Biden

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, in Jerusalem, forcefully denied that Biden was calling for Putin’s ouster. The US president’s point, Blinken said, was that “Putin cannot be empowered to wage war, or engage in aggression against Ukraine, or anyone else”.

The choice of Russia’s leader, Blinken clarified, is “up to the Russians”.

However, Biden has been at the receiving end of the Republicans in the US.

As noted by a senior Republican lawmaker, Senator Jim Risch, the remarks ran 180-degrees counter to the Biden administration’s constant efforts until now to stop the conflict from escalating. “There’s not a whole lot more you can do to escalate than to call for regime change,” he told CNN.

Richard Haass, an American diplomat who heads the Council on Foreign Relations, said Biden had “made a difficult situation more difficult and a dangerous situation more dangerous”. “Putin will see it as confirmation of what he’s believed all along,” Haass wrote on Twitter. “Bad lapse in discipline that runs risk of extending the scope and duration of the war.”

The fallout

The US administration was quick to clarify Biden’s remarks, understanding the harm his words can cause. It’s one thing criticising another leader and another calling for his ouster.

“There’s a line between condemning a nation’s leader – the sometimes overheated rhetoric of diplomacy – and calling for his removal. It was a line both the Americans and the Soviets respected even at the height of the Cold War. And it is a line that Mr Biden had apparently crossed,” wrote journalist Anthony Zurcher in BBC.

Will Biden’s remark then further escalate tensions? The US president has already personalised the conflict by calling Putin a thug, a murderous dictator, war criminal and now a butcher. The hostility has definitely increased.

“Any idea that the US saw the conflict as an attempt to unseat Putin would be dangerous since it would elevate the clash to a direct confrontation between the United States and Russia,” White House reporter Stephen Collinson wrote in CNN.

He said that any future ceasefire deals with Russia are unlike to be a result of American diplomacy, given the tensions between Moscow and Washington. But preventing future escalation between the two nations also depends on Biden and Putin talking to one another. “It was already hard to see how Biden could meet a Russian leader whom he has branded a war criminal. This weekend’s events made that even more difficult,” wrote Collinson.

With inputs from agencies

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