Sputnik
March 28, 2022
-Sputnik
On Saturday, during a speech in Poland, US President Joe Biden said that his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin “cannot remain in power”, raising eyebrows among both American allies and critics.
Joe Biden’s new remarks regarding Russian President Vladimir Putin are alarming, according to Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov.
“We will continue to closely monitor the statements by the president of the United States”, he said. “We carefully record them and will continue to do so”.
Peskov’s comments followed Biden’s speech in Poland, in which the US president said, speaking about Putin, “for God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power”.
The remark caused waves among many observers, among them world leaders and prominent American politicians. Top Russian officials, including Russian State Duma speaker Vyacheslav Volodin, condemned Biden’s statement, saying that such behaviour could only be displayed by either an “old or sick man”.
Biden’s line did not go unnoticed by French President Emmanuel Macron, who criticised the American leader’s choice of words, reminding Biden that, if the West wants to resolve the ongoing Ukrainian conflict, it “can’t escalate either in words or action”.
Several American lawmakers were also not fond of Biden’s rhetoric in Poland. According to Senator James Risch (R-ID), Biden’s remark was a “horrendous gaffe” that could “cause a huge problem”.
The White House was quick to walk back the remark, however, assuring that Biden did not mean that the United States has any kind of strategy to back a regime change in Russia. The assurances came from Secretary of State Antony Blinken and US envoy to NATO Julianne Smith.
This was not Joe Biden’s first failure to stick to diplomatic protocols when commenting on his Russian counterpart. On the same Saturday in Poland, the US president called Putin “a butcher”, after previously labelling him “a war criminal” and “a thug”.
