Biden seeks to temper remark on Putin as US allies object

Bloomberg

President Joe Biden sought to clarify his call for the removal of Vladimir Putin, saying he wasn’t seeking regime change after European allies raised concern and critics said he was further inflaming tension with Russia.
French President Emmanuel Macron and the UK government distanced themselves from Biden’s stunning comment, which capped a speech in Warsaw to rally support for Ukraine against Russia. One administration official suggested Biden was influenced by stories of suffering he heard from Ukrainian refugees.
With a poll taken before Biden’s European trip saying that some 70% of Americans have limited or little confidence in his handling of the Ukraine war, the stakes were already high. After the speech, Biden faced questions about the wisdom of going off-script and aides fanned out to say that the US hasn’t adopted a policy of seeking regime change.
Biden gave a terse rebuttal in reply to a reporter’s shouted question as he left a church in Washington. Asked whether he wanted Putin removed and was calling for regime change, Biden said, “No.”
Julianne Smith, the US ambassador to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (Nato), cited Biden’s meetings with refugees at a Warsaw stadium hours before his address.
“In the moment, I think that was a principled human reaction to the stories that he had heard that day,” she said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” Biden called Putin “a butcher.”
Stoking a potentially dangerous confrontation with the Russian leader would be a risky approach for Biden as domestic challenges — inflation, soaring gasoline prices and an economic agenda that’s stuck in Congress — pile up ahead of mid-term elections in November where his Democrats’ majority in Congress is at stake.
While the Kremlin let Biden’s remarks sink in by largely refraining from public comment, US allies warned against implying a push to oust Putin — which could feed the Russian president’s narrative that the goal of the US and its allies is to remove him from power, not just to stop his invasion of Ukraine. “We shouldn’t escalate, with words or actions,” Macron, who has been a conduit to Putin, said on French television.
UK Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi, the cabinet member appearing on this week’s British morning shows, said Putin’s future should be “up to the Russian people.”
Biden has damage to repair after his comments “made a difficult situation more difficult and a dangerous situation more dangerous,” Richard Haass, president of the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations, said on Twitter.
U.S. General David Petraeus, a former commander of Nato forces in Afghanistan who headed the Central Intelligence Agency under President Barack Obama, said Biden’s comment “could complicate matters down the road.”
“It reminds us that message discipline has its virtues,” Petraeus said on ABC’s “This Week.” Biden went to Poland, a former Soviet satellite country that neighbours Ukraine, to deliver one of the most consequential speeches of his presidency.