Biden Says Putin “Cannot Remain in Power.” The White House Says He Didn’t Mean It.

President Joe Biden appeared on Saturday to urge the ouster of Russian President Vladimir Putin, in a seemingly unscripted remark that differs with official US policy. His comments drew a quick White House walk back.

“For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power,” the president said during a speech in Warsaw, Poland, that capped the president’s four-day trip to Europe.

The Biden administration has avoided advocating regime change in Russia. After Biden’s speech, the White House denied Biden had contradicted that stance. “The president’s point was that Putin cannot be allowed to exercise power over his neighbors or the region,” a White House official told reporters. “He was not discussing Putin’s power in Russia, or regime change.”

Biden’s remark came at the end of a speech in which he cast Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as an extension of the Soviet Union’s Cold War aggression, including the Soviet invasions of Hungary, Poland, and Czechoslovakia. While those states eventually won freedom, “the battle for democracy did not conclude with the end of the Cold War,” Biden said, arguing that “Russia has strangled democracy and sought to do so elsewhere,” he said.