Ukraine war: Joe Biden says ‘no apologies’ for remark on Vladimir Putin
- The US president says he was ‘expressing moral outrage’, not calling for regime change in Moscow when he said the Russian leader ‘cannot remain in power’
- Rejecting the idea that his comment could escalate tensions over the Ukraine crisis, Biden says ‘nobody believes’ he was talking about ‘taking down’ Putin
US President Joe Biden said Monday that he would make “no apologies” and was not “walking anything back” after his weekend comment that Russian President Vladimir Putin “cannot remain in power”. The president also insisted he was not calling for regime change in Moscow.
“I was expressing the moral outrage that I felt toward this man,” Biden said. “I wasn’t articulating a policy change.”
The president’s jarring remark about Putin, which came at the end of a Saturday speech in Warsaw that was intended to rally democracies for a long global struggle against autocracy, stirred controversy in the United States and rattled some allies in western Europe.
Biden on Monday rejected the idea that his comment could escalate tensions over the war in Ukraine or that it would feed Russian propaganda about Western aggression.
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Putin ‘cannot remain in power’ says Biden in speech condemning Russia's invasion of Ukraine
“Nobody believes … I was talking about taking down Putin,” Biden said, adding that “the last thing I want to do is engage in a land war or a nuclear war with Russia”.