The president of the United States, Joe Biden, gave a harsh speech in Poland this Saturday in which he stated that his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, "can’t stay in power" and warned him not to move "even a single centimeter" into NATO territory.
After meeting with Ukrainian refugees and ministers in Warsaw, Biden appeared before hundreds of people at the royal castle in the Polish capital to call on the West to commit to supporting Ukraine during a war he predicted would be "long".
A good part of his speech was addressed to the Russian population and to Putin himself, whom hours before he had described as a "butcher" and whom he accused of having returned his country "to the 19th century" with his decision to invade Ukraine.
"For God’s sake, this man can’t stay in power," Biden said at the end of his speech, with which he ended his tour of Belgium and Poland.
OUT OF SCRIPT
That phrase was not in the text prepared by his advisers, who were quick to clarify that Biden had not intended to ask for a "regime change" in Russia, something that his government has tried to avoid so as not to be accused of interference in Russian internal affairs.
A White House official told reporters that Biden did not want to refer to "Putin’s power in Russia," but just underline that it "cannot be allowed" for the Russian leader to "exercise his power over his neighbors in the region."
Biden often makes slips in his public statements, and on this European tour alone, his government had to correct two other statements by the president, on the use of chemical weapons and on the role of US troops in Poland.
Despite the nuances from the White House, it was clear that Biden would like, if only on a personal level, to see a replacement in the Kremlin, whose leader he has described as a "war criminal" and "murderous dictator."
"A dictator determined to rebuild an empire will never erase a people’s love of freedom. Brutality will never erode their desire to be free. Ukraine will never be a victory for Russia," he proclaimed in his speech.
Biden addressed the Russian people to tell them that the United States does not consider them an "enemy" and that they don’t "deserve" the war that Putin has launched, which, he considered, has become a "strategic failure for Russia" in its first month.
Aware of the fear of Poland and other Eastern European countries that Russia could launch some kind of attack against them, Biden stressed once again that the United States will intervene if there is aggression against a NATO member country, as established by the treaty of that organization.
"Don’t even think about moving an inch inside NATO territory," Biden warned Putin.
"A LONG FIGHT"
And he asked his allies to commit to the defense of Ukraine "long-term," because in his opinion it is part of the conflict between democracies and autocracies in which he believes the world is divided.
"We must stand together today and tomorrow and the day after, and for years and decades to come. There will be costs, but it is a price we have to pay," he stressed.
The war in Ukraine, he predicted, "will not be won in days or months," and it is necessary to steel oneself "with courage for a long fight."
Among the audience were Ukrainian refugees and other citizens of that country residing in Poland, who hoped to hear announcements of more aid to Ukraine and who, when Biden left, chanted "weapons for Ukraine!" and "Close the sky!".
They were thus referring to the no-fly zone that the Ukrainian government has asked NATO to establish over Ukraine, something that Biden has flatly refused, considering that it would lead to a world war.
Biden was also heard in the audience by Polish President Andrzej Duda and Belarusian opposition leader in exile Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, whom the US president telephoned after taking off for Washington to thank her for her attendance.
Also present were the Ukrainian Foreign and Defense Ministers, Dmytro Kuleba and Oleksii Reznikov, who had met with Biden and other American officials in Warsaw on Saturday morning.
The meeting marked the first in-person contact between Biden and Ukrainian officials since the start of the Russian invasion, and the US later announced that it had decided to deliver an additional $100 million to Ukraine to support basic government services.
THE REFUGEE CRISIS
The United States remains reluctant, however, to provide the fighter jets and tanks requested by Kyiv, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky showed his impatience in a phone call with Duda on Saturday.
"The price of the delay with the planes is thousands of lives of Ukrainians," Zelensky warned, as reported by the Financial Times newspaper.
As Russia launched missile attacks around the Ukrainian city of Lviv, near the Polish border, Biden visited some of the more than 2.17 million refugees who have fled from Ukraine to Poland since the war began.
At a football stadium in Warsaw, the president hugged a woman, took a girl in his arms and explained to the press that some children had asked him to pray for their parents, grandparents or siblings who are in Ukraine fighting the Russian forces.
"This is a wonderful group of people," stressed Biden, accompanied by Spanish chef José Andrés, whose anti-hunger organization World Central Kitchen is involved in the humanitarian response to the refugee crisis.