Joe Biden feels the heat over Poland ad libbing

The White House continues to ­insist the US is not seeking regime change in Russia after Joe Biden’s comments that Vladimir Putin ‘cannot remain in power’.

US President Joe Biden on his way to church after arriving back in Washington on Sunday. Picture: Getty Images

The White House continues to ­insist the US is not seeking regime change in Russia as it tries to contain the fallout from Joe Biden’s comments that Vladimir Putin is a “butcher” who “cannot remain in power”.

The ad libbed remarks at the end of a 27-minute address in Warsaw on Saturday drew a stinging rebuke from Moscow and alarmed NATO leaders, including French President Emmanuel Macron, who issued a tacit rebuke on Sunday, warning against verbal ­“escalation” with Moscow.

He said that his task was “achieving first a ceasefire and then the total withdrawal of troops by diplomatic means. If we want to do that, we can’t escalate either in words or actions.”

Mr Biden’s unscripted words have played into the Russian President’s hands, bolstering his claim that NATO support for Ukraine masks an existential threat to Russia.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said he had discussed the matter with Mr Biden following the comments. Ousting Mr Putin was “not the objective of NATO, nor that of the US President”, Mr Scholz told German television.

Mr Biden’s administration has emphasised throughout the crisis that it is not seeking regime change, and it attempted to play down the slip within minutes of the speech.

“He was not discussing Putin’s power in Russia, or regime change,” a White House official said. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, addressed the issue during a trip to Israel. “We do not have a strategy of regime change in Russia, or anywhere else, for that matter,” he said in Jerusalem. Biden had meant to say that Putin “cannot be empowered to wage war or engage in aggression against Ukraine or anyone else”.

Moscow was quick to pounce. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov described the comments as “astounding”, and suggested that Mr Biden was “the victim of many ­delusions”. Deciding who is leader of Russia “is not a question for Americans; not for the president of the US, or for any citizen of the US”.

America’s allies have been dismayed by the gaffe, which is certain to complicate efforts to secure a ceasefire – and it is not Mr Biden’s first. On Friday, when he was meeting US troops in Poland, he suggested that they would witness the bravery of Ukrainians “when you’re there”. The US has insisted throughout the crisis that its forces will not be deployed to fight in Ukraine.

Mr Biden faced a barrage of criticism in Washington on Sunday. “What it tells me is that the top team is not thinking about plausible war termination,” ­Michael O’Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, told The Washington Post. “If they were, Biden’s head wouldn’t be in a place where he’s saying, ‘Putin must go’.”

Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations and a veteran US diplomat, said Mr Biden’s remarks risked reinforcing Mr Putin’s fear that America’s ultimate goal is to topple him. “The fact that it was so off-script in some ways makes it worse,” he said, ­because it suggested that the comments ­reflected Mr Biden’s true belief.

The Times