Iran Press/ America: Joe Biden said Monday that he is not walking anything back after his weekend comment that Russian President Vladimir Putin cannot remain in power," although Biden insisted he's not calling for regime change in Moscow.
I was expressing the moral outrage that I felt toward this man, he said. "I wasn't articulating a policy change," Biden said he was not concerned that his comments would escalate tensions over the war in Ukraine.
This is just stating a simple fact, that this kind of behavior is totally unacceptable, he said.
We need military de-escalation and rhetoric de-escalation, Antonio Guterres said on Monday.
French President Emanuel Macron on Sunday said he wouldn't use those terms because I continue to speak to President Putin, because what do we want to do collectively? We want to stop the war that Russia launched in Ukraine, without waging war and without escalation.
Biden's remark about Putin, which came at the end of a speech in Warsaw that was intended to rally countries for a long global struggle against Russia, stirred controversy in the United States and rattled some of its allies in Western Europe.
Although the White House insisted after the speech that Biden was not calling for a regime change in Russia, the US Republicans questioned why he decided to go off-script when dealing with a combustible conflict.
Some said Biden's provocative rhetoric was strange given his otherwise cautious approach, such as refusing to facilitate the transfer of Polish fighter jets to Ukraine's military.
"If we're so worried about provoking him that we couldn't even send MiGs into Ukraine, how is this any different?," Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, told CNN's State of the Union on Sunday. "In fact, I would say it's more provocative than sending MiGs into Ukraine."
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