Joe Biden Clarifies Comment That Vladimir Putin "Cannot Remain in Power" Amid Russia-Ukraine War: "I Just Was Expressing My Outrage"

After President Joe Biden caused a worldwide outcry by saying that Putin "cannot remain in power" at a big address in Europe on Saturday, White House officials hurried to undertake damage control.

Biden's senior advisers were obliged to subsequently clarify that the US president was not asking for a regime change. During a brief news conference at the White House on Monday, US President Donald Trump defended his remarks.

Biden's Remark on Putin Was About "Moral Outrage"

During a tense interaction with reporters, he stressed that he was expressing his "personal feelings." "For God's sake, this man cannot remain in power," Biden declared in an impassioned speech from Warsaw, only minutes after Russia fired missiles towards Lviv, 40 miles from the Polish border.

The remarks were generally considered the latest in a string of gaffes in recent weeks, indicating that US forces would enter Ukraine and that the West would respond "in-kind" if Russia used chemical weapons. Biden's relationship with Western allies has been strained by the remark, which has fueled the Kremlin's argument that Russia is under an "existential" danger.

"You interpret the language that way," Biden told a reporter on Monday, appearing to blame the media for the White House's recent explanations. As he works to stop Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Biden said he has not ruled out meeting with Putin again, Telegraph reported.

The White House and Biden have sought to minimize the statement on several occasions. Biden, according to the administration and friends, was not advocating for regime change to depose Putin. Instead, they claim that Biden was implying that Putin should not be permitted to wield authority over neighboring countries.

Officials Criticize Biden's Speech

The unexpected remark regarding Putin caught the staffers guard who was watching Biden's remarks on TV or at the event site off guard. And the phrases weren't anything Biden had mentioned as possible inclusion in his speech before - US officials had previously stated that replacing the leadership in Moscow was not one of their goals.

Biden warned NATO leaders in closed-door meetings earlier this week that he did not want to exacerbate the West's battle with Russia. People who talked with Biden before and after the speech reported him as emotionally moved after speaking with refugees at Warsaw's national stadium, where ladies implored him to pray for the men who had stayed behind to fight - husbands, sons, and brothers.

When asked by reporters accompanying the president what witnessing the migrants made him think of Putin daily, Biden replied, "He's a butcher."

Officials alerted the President Biden of a series of missile attacks on fuel storage in Lviv, Ukraine, a western city not far from the Polish border, just before the address. Biden was in Warsaw at the time, so the timing was hardly a coincidence, as per CNN.

Biden's statement has been criticized by officials both inside and outside Russia. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov tells Reuters that whether Putin stays in power is not for Biden to decide. The president of Russia is elected by Russians. Russian lawmaker Vyacheslav Volodin called Biden "weak, sick, and unhappy."

Biden's remarks alarmed French President Emmanuel Macron, who warned against a rhetorical "escalation" of relations between Russia and Western nations. Others, however, slammed the White House statement, saying that leaders should not back down from their calls for Putin's ouster in the wake of allegations of Russian military firing on people in Ukraine.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said only last week that the US administration believes Russian soldiers in Ukraine have committed war crimes. In a social media post, Garry Kasparov, a Russian chess grandmaster and head of the Human Rights Foundation, voiced his unhappiness with the White House's statements, according to Newsweek via MSN.