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The president of the United States, Joe Biden, assured that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine threatens to unbalance world security. The president also said that the international community must prepare for a long fight against authoritarianism and called Russian President Vladimir Putin a “butcher” during a meeting with refugees who have fled from Ukraine to Poland.
“For God’s sake, this man cannot stay in power”, perhaps the most drastic words that the president of the United States, Joe Biden, has used against his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, since the beginning of the war with Russia. Ukraine.
The statements that the US president made this Saturday, March 26, from the Royal Castle in Warsaw, Poland, resonated in different parts of the world as a speech that even the White House had to explain again due to misunderstandings.
“The president’s point was that Putin cannot be allowed to exercise power over his neighbors or the region. He was not talking about Putin’s power in Russia, or regime change,” a White House official said after the intervention. of Biden in Warsaw.
A very different reaction from the Kremlin. After questions from journalists about it, the Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, assured that “this is not something that Biden should decide. The president of Russia is elected by the Russians.”
In front of a crowd waving Polish, Ukrainian and American flags, the Democrat also assured that “the West is now stronger and more united than ever”, explaining that Putin’s desire for “absolute power” was a failure for Russia. and a direct challenge to the European peace that has largely prevailed since World War II.
Later, on his official Twitter account, Joe Biden sent a direct message to the Russians in which he assured that the Russians “are not the enemy.” The post was a 2-minute, 31-second video with Russian subtitles that condensed part of the president’s speech in the Polish capital.
“Your courageous resistance is part of a larger fight for the essential democratic principles that bind all free people together,” Biden said. “We’re with you, period,” she added.
However, although the phrases of the US president seem to have caused a positive impact among the crowd, some consider that the president’s words were excessive.
For Pawel Sterninski, for example, who traveled almost three hours to Warsaw from elsewhere in Poland to listen to Biden, “The United States cannot engage militarily because that could lead to a third world war. Putin is unpredictable. If he threatens with weapons nuclear weapons, a moment is all it takes for it to become a global conflict.
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President Biden is wrapping up this weekend three days of emergency meetings in Europe with the G7, the European Council and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) seeking to build a unified approach to quell Putin’s attempt to continue the war with Ukraine.
“President Biden said that what is happening in Ukraine will change the history of the 21st century, and we will work together to ensure that this change is in our favor, in favor of Ukraine, in favor of the democratic world,” said Foreign Minister of Ukraine, Dmytro Kuleba, on the country’s national television service.
Joe Biden visits refugees in Poland
In Warsaw, Biden also visited a refugee reception center at the national stadium. She spoke with the refugees who had gathered to receive food from the NGO World Central Kitchen, took photos with some of them and, individually, learned the names and cities of origin of a few.
More than 2 million people have left their homes in Ukraine to seek refuge in Poland. In all, some 3.8 million have left Ukraine since the fighting began.
In the past, Poland was under communist rule for at least 40 years until 1989 and the country was also a member of the Moscow-led Warsaw Pact security alliance. Today, Poland is part of the European Union and is also one of the member countries of NATO.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has called Russia’s military actions in Ukraine a “special military operation” to demilitarize and “denazify” the country, and this week the Kremlin has assured that the “operation” is almost over and they plan to start “the second phase of the operation”, which is planned to focus on the Donbass region.
With Reuters and AP
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