US President Joe Biden says Russia’s Vladimir Putin ‘cannot remain in power’

US President Joe Biden has said Vladimir Putin “cannot remain in power”, dramatically escalating the rhetoric against the Russian leader after his brutal invasion of Ukraine.

Even as Mr Biden’s words rocketed around the world, the White House attempted to clarify them, saying soon after Mr Biden finished speaking in Poland that he was not calling for a new government in Russia.

A White House official said Mr Biden was “not discussing Putin’s power in Russia or regime change”.

The official, who was not authorised to comment by name and spoke on the condition of anonymity, said Mr Biden’s point was: “Putin cannot be allowed to exercise power over his neighbours or the region.”

The official did not respond when asked whether Mr Biden’s comment was part of his prepared speech for the address in Warsaw or was made off the cuff.

“For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power,” Mr Biden said at the very end of a speech in Poland’s capital that served as the capstone on a four-day trip to Europe.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said it wasn’t Mr Biden’s place to decide who ruled Russia.

“The president of Russia is elected by Russians,” he said.

Mr Biden also received criticism at home, with a former director of policy planning at the State Department saying the President had a “bad lapse in discipline”.

“The White House walk-back of POTUS regime change call is unlikely to wash,” Richard Haass, who is now the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, wrote in a Twitter posting.

“Putin will see it as confirmation of what he’s believed all along. Bad lapse in discipline that runs risk of extending the scope and duration of the war.”

However, a spokesman for Poland’s foreign affairs ministry, Lukasz Jasina, said the US President was clearly alluding to regime change.

“He declared openly who is responsible for that war, and that this responsible person is Mr Putin,” Mr Jasina said.

“Putin cannot be accepted back into our world society. He’s not a partner we trust. Only without him this war could be stopped.”

Mr Biden has frequently talked about ensuring the Kremlin’s invasion, now in its second month, becomes a “strategic failure” for Mr Putin, and has described the Russian leader as a “war criminal”.

But until his remarks in Warsaw, the American leader had not veered towards suggesting Mr Putin should not run Russia.

Earlier on Saturday, shortly after meeting with Ukrainian refugees, Mr Biden called Mr Putin a “butcher”.

Mr Biden also used his speech to make a vociferous defence of liberal democracy and the NATO military alliance, while saying Europe must steel itself for a long fight against Russian aggression.

‘Your freedom is ours’

Earlier in the day, as Mr Biden met with Ukrainian refugees, Russia kept up its pounding of cities throughout Ukraine.

Explosions rang out in Lviv, the closest major Ukrainian city to Poland and a destination for the internally replaced that has been largely spared from major attacks.

The images of Mr Biden reassuring refugees and calling for Western unity contrasted with the dramatic scenes of flames and black smoke billowing so near to the Polish border.

In what was billed by the White House as a major address, Mr Biden spoke inside the Royal Castle, one of Warsaw’s notable landmarks that was badly damaged during World War II.

He borrowed the words of Polish-born Pope John Paul II and cited anti-communist Polish dissident and former president Lech Walesa as he warned that Mr Putin’s invasion of Ukraine threatened to bring “decades of war”.

The crowd of about 1,000 included some of the Ukrainian refugees who fled for Poland in the midst of the brutal invasion.

“This battle will not be won in days, or months, either,” Mr Biden said.

The President tried to use his final hours of his European trip to reassure Poland that the United States would defend against any attacks by Russia, as he acknowledged that the NATO ally bore the burden of the refugee crisis from the war.

“Your freedom is ours,” Mr Biden told Poland’s President, Andrzej Duda earlier, echoing one of that country’s unofficial mottos.

More than 3.7 million people have fled Ukraine since the war began, and more than 2.2 million Ukrainians have crossed into Poland, but it is unclear how many have remained there and how many have left for other countries.

Earlier this week, the US announced it would take in as many as 100,000 refugees, and Mr Biden told Mr Duda he understood Poland was “taking on a big responsibility, but it should be all of NATO’s responsibility”.

Mr Biden called NATO’s “collective defence” agreement a “sacred commitment”, and said the unity of the military alliance was of the utmost importance.

“I’m confident that Vladimir Putin was counting on dividing NATO,” Mr Biden said.

“But he hasn’t been able to do it. We’ve all stayed together.”

European security is facing its most serious test since World War II.

Western leaders have spent the past week consulting over contingency plans in case the conflict spreads.

The invasion has shaken NATO out of any complacency it might have felt and cast a dark shadow over Europe.

The US and many of its allies have imposed multiple rounds of economic and other sanctions on Russian individuals, banks and other entities in the hope the cumulative effect over time will force Mr Putin to withdraw his troops, but no clear path to ending the conflict has emerged.

ABC