Warsaw Russia accompanied Joe Biden’s performance in Warsaw with two heavy waves of attacks on the western Ukrainian metropolis of Lviv, just 340 kilometers away. In the Polish capital in the evening, the US President called for an end to the rule of Russian President Vladimir Putin: “For God’s sake, this man cannot stay in power,” he said on Saturday at the end of his visit to Warsaw. Only a few hours earlier, Russian rockets and artillery had carried out the heaviest hits so far against Lviv – where hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians had fled and from where many media representatives are reporting.
Biden’s comments caused confusion in the evening. Following his speech, the White House felt compelled to clarify that Biden had not called for regime change in Russia in his speech. When he said “Putin cannot remain in power,” the US President meant that he should not exercise power over neighboring countries or the region, says a spokesman for the US President’s Office. Biden did not talk about Putin’s power in Russia or regime change. There was also speculation as to whether Biden’s sentence was previously in the speech manuscript or whether the 79-year-old added it spontaneously.
Biden also prepared the world for a long conflict over the future international order. It is about a “great battle between democracy and autocracy, between freedom and oppression, between a rule-based order and one that is determined by brute force,” said Biden on Saturday evening. “We have to be clear about this: This battle will not be fought in days or in months. We have to steel ourselves for a long fight.”
In his speech, Biden warned the Kremlin boss in no uncertain terms: “Don’t even think about it,” he literally cried out at that moment, “to go a single centimeter on NATO territory.” These two announcements are a clear intensification of the confrontation with Russia.
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Biden is thus in line with his predecessor Barack Obama: In August 2012, he threatened the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad with a military strike if he used chemical weapons. Obama had also questioned Assad’s staying in power. Three years later, Russia sided with Assad in the Syrian war and used its massive airstrikes to regain power for the dictator against the rebels. They had previously held large parts of the Levant state.
Now Biden has drawn this red line on the border of NATO territory. But in the Ukraine war, Russia comes dangerously close to the border with Poland and thus with the western alliance. “Putin is a player who appeals very highly and who can be trusted to do anything,” Ukrainian Deputy Foreign Minister Emine Dschaparowa told the Handelsblatt at the Doha Forum in the capital of Qatar. Like Biden, she warned against the use of Russian chemical weapons in her country.
In this case, Biden had already announced violent counter-reactions from the West a few days ago. However, without describing them exactly.
Kremlin angered by Biden remarks
The US President is thus taking a dangerous course: he puts the reins of action in Putin’s hands and would have to react sharply if the Kremlin ruler deliberately crossed the red lines he had drawn, even if only temporarily. Otherwise, he will quickly lose his role as leader of the West, which he has strengthened in recent months, and will also come under a lot of pressure domestically. Putin could now feel all the more tempted to violate political or military borders.
Immediately after Biden’s speech, Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, made it clear how angry the Russian leadership is at Biden’s labeling of Putin as a “butcher”: These “personal insults always close the window of opportunity for our bilateral relations under the current government,” he said the Kremlin spokesman for the Tass news agency.
Political observers at the Doha Forum, a leading global foreign policy conference, expressed concern that a battered and weakened Putin was becoming even more dangerous and unpredictable. Because after the repeated military setbacks in his attack on Ukraine, the Russian President is coming under increasing pressure and could attempt a highly dangerous liberation: “Is Russia’s hunger really satisfied with Ukraine?” asked the Ukrainian President Volodymyr, who was connected via video to Doha Selenski and warned of a Russian use of nuclear or chemical weapons.
Biden also made it clear that “you, the Russian people, are not our enemy”. But he went dangerously far with his direct verbal attack on Putin.
Refugees should be the responsibility of the whole of NATO
Biden’s visit to Poland also addressed the issue of refugees. The US President thanked the refugees from Ukraine for accepting them. “We recognize that Poland is taking on a great responsibility, which I believe should not only concern Poland. It should be the responsibility of the whole world, of all NATO,” said the US President. “We understand the fact that so many Ukrainians are seeking refuge in Poland, because we have thousands of people on our southern border who (…) try to get to the United States every day.”
According to US President Biden, the Russian economy will “halve” in the coming years because of the tough Western sanctions. Before the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine, Russia was the eleventh largest economy in the world, soon Russia will hardly be among the 20 largest, said Biden in Warsaw on Saturday at the end of a two-day visit to Poland.
The sanctions are said to be so effective that they compete with “military power”. The economic cost is also undermining the Russian military, Biden said. “As a result of these unprecedented sanctions, the ruble was reduced to rubble almost immediately,” Biden said, referring to the dramatic devaluation of Russia’s national currency. “The economy is poised to be halved in the coming years,” he said.
With material from Reuters and dpa.
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