[ad_1]
President Biden demanded the ouster of Vladimir Putin Saturday to wrap up three days of diplomacy in Europe as the Russian invasion of Ukraine entered its second month.
“For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power,” Biden thundered in his most dramatic attack on the Russian leader – on the same day he referred to Putin as a “butcher” for his attack on Ukraine.
“A dictator bent on rebuilding an empire will never erase a people’s love of liberty,” he said. “Free people refuse to live in a world of hopelessness and darkness.”
Biden opened the 27-minute speech on a soothing note.
“Be not afraid,” Biden said, quoting Pope John Paul II when the first Polish pontiff was elected to the papacy in 1978.
“It was a message about the power of faith, the power of resilience, the power of the people,” he said — “a message that will overcome this unjust war.”
But he soon segued into harsher rhetoric, saying that the world’s democracies must forcefully defeat autocratic regimes like Putin’s.
“We must commit now to being in this fight for the long haul, for the years and decades to come,” Biden said. “There will be costs, but it’s a price we have to pay.”
Biden spoke outside the Royal Castle in Warsaw, Poland, which was dramatically lit for the occasion by blue floodlights. Huge American and Polish flags were draped over the building’s red stone facade.
Biden’s high-stakes speech came on the heels of emergency summit meetings in Brussels with NATO allies and the European Commission, where he announced a plan to punish Moscow by cutting Europe’s use of Russian energy — an idea that has received pushback from Germany and others.
The president spoke just hours after he conferred with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, who had traveled secretly to Warsaw to meet with Biden in person.
“We did receive additional promises from the United States on how our defense co-operation will evolve,” Kuleba told reporters.
They also discussed potential new sanctions, Kuleba said — including the possibility of barring Russian vessels and goods from all American and European ports.
Kuleba and his colleagues remained in Warsaw to attend Biden’s speech Saturday.
[ad_2]