White House says it isn’t seeking regime change in Russia as country’s invasion of Ukraine continues; budget to include infrastructure splash

Top American diplomats have clarified that the United States does not have a policy of regime change in Russia, as supporters and critics of President Joe Biden played down his weekend declaration that Russian President Vladimir Putin “cannot remain in power”.

Biden’s comments, made during a speech in Poland on Saturday (European time), included a statement calling Putin a “butcher” and appeared to be a sharp escalation of the White House’s approach to Moscow over its invasion of Ukraine.

But Julianne Smith, the US ambassador to NATO, has since sought to contextualise Biden’s remarks – saying they followed a day of speaking with Ukrainian refugees in Warsaw. Russia’s month-old invasion has driven a quarter of Ukraine’s population of 44 million from their homes.

“In the moment, I think that was a principled human reaction to the stories that he had heard that day,” Smith told CNN’s State of the Union program before adding: “The US does not have a policy of regime change in Russia. Full stop.”

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told a news conference in Jerusalem that Biden was making the point that Putin couldn’t be empowered to wage war. But Blinken said any decision on Russia’s future leadership would be “up to the Russian people”.

In the US, Republicans said Biden’s remarks amounted to an unfortunate blunder.

Senator James Risch, the top Republican on the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, called Biden’s remarks a “horrendous gaffe” and said he wished the President would have stayed on script.

“Most people who don’t deal in the lane of foreign relations don’t realise those nine words that he uttered would cause the kind of eruption that they did,” he told CNN.

“It’s going to cause a huge problem.”

Senator Rob Portman, who is also on the committee, lamented the public misstep in wartime.

“It plays into the hands of the Russian propagandists and plays into the hands of Vladimir Putin. So it was a mistake,” Portman told NBC’s Meet the Press.

Reuters