President Joe Biden defended his unscripted remarks that he made over the weekend during an important speech in Poland, in which he said that Russian President Vladimir Putin “cannot remain in power.”
The off-the-cuff remarks prompted hurried efforts by top administration officials to downplay the comments in order to prevent international criticism.
But Biden defended his language on Sunday, saying that it was not about seeking a “regime change” as a new policy, but that it was about personal “moral outrage.”
Biden was questioned on Sunday after attending a church service, where he denied that he was seeking a new U.S. policy of Russian “regime change”.
Then on Monday, at an event at the White House with the director of the Office of Management and Budget Shalanda Young in which they were presenting 2023 budget proposals, Biden was again asked about his remarks in Poland.
Biden said that he is “not walking anything back,” and made it clear that he was not calling for a regime change. Biden adamantly said that the word choice was in order to express personal moral outrage at the “brutality” of Putin’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine and that they came after having visited some of the millions of Ukrainian refugees who have had to flee their country in the past month.
He continued that he wanted to be clear that he was not then, nor was he now, articulating a policy change. However, he makes no apologies for it.
Biden also said that Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is “totally unacceptable,” and that his comments do not undermine the diplomatic efforts that are being made by the U.S. and its allies to pursue peace and bring about a diplomatic end to the invasion of Ukraine.
Negotiations between Ukraine and Russia resumed today in Turkey, making it the first meeting in more than two weeks.
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