President Biden said Tuesday that the U.S. is not seeking to remove Russian president Vladimir Putin from power in response to his invasion of Ukraine, months after the U.S. president said “this man cannot remain in power.”
“We do not seek a war between NATO and Russia. As much as I disagree with Mr. Putin, and find his actions an outrage, the United States will not try to bring about his ouster in Moscow,” Biden wrote in an op-ed for the New York Times published on Tuesday.
“So long as the United States or our allies are not attacked, we will not be directly engaged in this conflict, either by sending American troops to fight in Ukraine or by attacking Russian forces,” the president added.
In March, Biden stunned many — including those in his own administration — with his speech on the invasion of Ukraine at the Royal Castle in Warsaw, Poland.
“Ukraine will never be a victory for Russia. For free people refuse to live in a world of hopelessness and darkness,” Biden said at the conclusion of the speech. They “have a different future, a brighter future, rooted in democracy and principle, hope and light, of decency and dignity and freedom and possibilities.”
Biden added, “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power.”
Minutes after the speech, a White House official said Biden was not calling for a regime change in Russia. “The President’s point was Putin cannot be allowed to exercise power over his neighbors or the region. He was not discussing Putin’s power in Russia, or regime change,” the official said.
Yet Biden stood by his initial statement at the time.
“I’m not walking anything back,” he said days later. “I was expressing the moral outrage I felt” after visiting with Ukrainian refugees.
“I was not then, nor am I now, articulating a policy change,” Biden added in March.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken noted at the time that while the U.S. does not have a strategy of regime change, the administration does have a “strategy to strongly support Ukraine.”
Biden wrote in his op-ed on Tuesday that the U.S. plans to send more advanced rocket systems to Ukraine. U.S. lawmakers have approved $40 billion in security, economic and humanitarian assistance to Ukraine.
He also said he would not push Ukrainian leaders to make territorial concessions to Russia to end the war.
“It would be wrong and contrary to well-settled principles to do so,” Biden wrote.