After four days of alliance building, emotional interactions with refugees and stirring words about the need to fight for democracy, one sentence that President Joe Biden appeared to tack on to the end of his final speech in Poland threatened to overshadow all he had achieved as he deals with the most significant foreign policy crisis of his presidency.
“For God’s sake,” Biden said of Russian President Vladimir Putin, “this man cannot remain in power.”
The White House, which declined to say whether Biden had planned that remark, tried to quickly walk it back.
Biden was not promoting regime change, said an official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The point the president was trying to make in his remarks in a packed courtyard of the Royal Castle in Warsaw on Saturday, the official said, was that Putin “cannot be allowed to exercise power over his neighbors or the region.”
Biden may have been saying what he believes, but it was not smart policy to say it aloud, said Tom Schwartz, a historian of U.S. foreign relations at Vanderbilt University.
“When Biden ad libs, there is trouble,” he said. “The administration needs to be more disciplined if it wants to get a negotiated settlement.”
Analysts warned that Biden’s remark could ripple across the NATO alliance as western leaders try to get Putin to end the war in Ukraine and – in a worst-case scenario – cause the Russian leader to expand the scope and duration of the conflict.
Biden’s comment could play into Russian propaganda, cause Putin’s already paranoid inner circle to crack down further on dissent inside Russia and prompt Putin to escalate the war on the grounds that he is protecting Russian interests, they said.
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In Russia, “this comment will be viewed as direct interference in Russia’s internal affairs and play into Russian propaganda that the United States is a hostile power,” said Will Pomeranz, acting director of the Wilson Center’s Kennan Institute, a think tank dedicated to Russian and Eurasia research.
Putin’s inner circle probably viewed Biden’s statement as the president speaking out loud what they already believed was U.S. policy, said Heather Conley, president of the German Marshall Fund, which promotes cooperation and understanding between North America and Europe.
Biden’s earlier statements that Putin is a war criminal and the State Department’s formal determination Wednesday that Russian troops have committed war crimes hurt any chances of face-to-face conversations with Putin, Conley said.
Biden’s comment that Putin cannot remain in power “makes it almost impossible for the two leaders to speak,” she said.
After meeting Saturday with refugees from Mariupol, the city in southeastern Ukraine that has been relentlessly shelled, Biden called Putin “a butcher.”
Earlier this month, when South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham suggested Putin should be assassinated, the White House immediately made clear regime change is not U.S. policy.
That made Biden's comment Saturday all the more striking.
Some analysts said Biden’s remark is unlikely to change Putin’s calculus on the war in Ukraine.
“Indeed, it will only confirm that he has no path to retreat,” Pomeranz said. “The Russian people will ultimately decide the fate of Vladimir Putin, although obviously, it is unlikely to happen as a result of an election. Nevertheless, it appears that Putin is headed to a major military defeat and catastrophic economic collapse, a combination that is usually fatal even for an autocratic ruler.”
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Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, said the White House’s attempt to walk back Biden’s remark is unlikely to placate Russia.
“Putin will see it as confirmation of what he’s believed all along,” Haass wrote on Twitter. He called the comment a “bad lapse in discipline that runs risk of extending the scope and duration of the war.”
“Our interests are to end the war on terms Ukraine can accept & to discourage Russian escalation,” Haass wrote. “Today’s call for regime change is inconsistent with these ends.”
After Biden’s speech, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told The Associated Press that “it’s not up to the president of the U.S. and not up to the Americans to decide who will remain in power in Russia.”
“Only Russians, who vote for their president, can decide that,” Peskov said. “And of course it is unbecoming for the president of the U.S. to make such statements.”
Tom Nichols, an expert on U.S.-Russia relations at the U.S. Naval War College, called that a ”whatever" response from Moscow.
“Which is about right and about all the whole thing warrants while the goal here is to end a war of Russian aggression,” Nichols tweeted.
Garret Martin, an expert on transatlantic relations at American University, said Putin already believed that the U.S. was out to get him, so Biden’s comments are not likely to change his calculus
But Moscow could use them to argue to Russians that America’s real goal is not helping Ukraine but undermining the Russian government.
“In the battle for narratives, maybe it helps Putin domestically a little bit,” Martin said.
In his speech, Biden made an appeal to ordinary Russians, telling them: “This war is not worthy of you, the Russian people.”
“The American people stand with you and the brave citizens of Ukraine who want peace,” he said.
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Martin and others said other aspects of Biden’s speech and trip will have longer lasting impacts, particularly the solidarity that Biden helped build among allies.
“While the Putin 'cannot remain in power' line will get the most attention, don't be distracted by it,” David Rothkopf, author of “National Insecurity: American Leadership in an Age of Fear,” wrote on Twitter. “It was the overall thrust of the speech and the degree to which Biden and our allies are backing it up that matters the most in a historical sense.”
The U.S. and its allies have never been more unified in an approach to an international security crisis in the post-Cold War era, said Timothy Naftali, a presidential historian at New York University. And Biden deserves some credit for that, he said.
“Understandably, the president let his emotions get away from him,” Naftali said. “It is hard to imagine any modern state would want to be led much longer by anyone who intentionally bombs and starves out civilians.”
Contributing: Associated Press
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Biden's comment that Putin can't remain in power stirs concern
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