Russian President Vladimir Putin “cannot stay in power,” US President Joe Biden said on Saturday during a speech on Ukraine at the Royal Castle in Warsaw.
“We will have a different future, a brighter future, rooted in democracy and principles, hope and light, decency and dignity, freedom, opportunity. For the love of God, this man cannot stay in power,” said the American president, in a particularly harsh speech to Vladimir Putin.
A White House official later clarified that “what the president meant was that Putin cannot be allowed to wield power over his neighbors or over the region. He was not talking about Putin’s power in Russia, nor about regime change. »
Earlier in the day, Biden had met with Ukrainian refugees hosted in Poland and, moved by what he had seen, called Russian President Vladimir Putin a “butcher”.
Joe Biden also reaffirmed that the United States did not want to come into conflict with the Russian forces that invaded Ukraine, but he issued a strong warning to Moscow: “Don’t even think about advancing an inch in NATO territory.
“This war is already a strategic failure for Russia,” he added.
He also addressed the Russians directly to tell them that “the Russian people are not our enemy” in the context of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
“I refuse to believe that you welcome the murder of innocent children and grandparents or that you accept that hospitals, schools, maternities are pounded by missiles and Russian bombs,” he said. .
Blinken in Israel
The head of the American diplomacy, Antony Blinken, meanwhile arrived in Israel on Saturday as part of a Middle East tour aimed at rallying support for Ukraine and allaying the Jewish state’s concerns over a possible Iranian nuclear deal.
The diplomat must stay until Monday in Israel, the first leg of his tour of the region which will also take him to the occupied West Bank, Morocco and Algeria.
The Secretary of State wants to show that the United States is not losing interest in the Middle East, even if Washington’s attention seems to be primarily focused on China, and more recently, on Ukraine.
He hopes to obtain support for the efforts of the United States and NATO to counter the Russian offensive, in a context marked by the heavy economic consequences of the war, in particular the surge in energy prices and the threat of a shortage of wheat which could deal a very serious blow to the Arab countries.