WARSAW — President Biden on Saturday strongly denounced Vladimir V. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, declaring “for God’s sake, this man can’t stay in power,” while pitching war as the final front in a decades-long battle between the forces of democracy and oppression.
After ending a three-day diplomatic trip to Europe with a fiery speech outside an ancient castle in Warsaw, Biden described the Russian invasion of Ukraine as the “all-time test” in a post-World War II struggle between democracy and autocracy, “between freedom and repression, between a rules-based order and one ruled by brute force.”
“We must be sharp in this fight,” Mr Biden said in front of a crowd that waved Polish, Ukrainian and American flags. “This battle will not be won in days or months either. We must arm ourselves against the long battle that lies ahead.”
Mr Biden used the speech to bolster a key NATO ally on Ukraine’s western border, which has served as a conduit for Western weapons and has taken in more than 2 million refugees fleeing the violence, more than any other country in Europe . And he tried to prepare the public, at home and abroad, for a harrowing conflict that could drag on for weeks, months or longer.
Just hours before the event, rockets hit the western Ukrainian city of Lviv, about 80 miles from the Polish border, prolonging Russia’s months-long attack on major cities and civilian populations and undermining Russian statements a day earlier that suggested Moscow was targeting in the war.
While declaring that “the Russian people are not our enemy,” Mr. Biden unleashed an angry diatribe against Mr. Putin’s claim that the invasion of Ukraine is intended to “de-nazify” the country. Mr Biden called that justification “a lie,” noting that Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky is Jewish and his father’s family perished in the Holocaust.
“It’s just cynical,” Mr Biden said. “He knows that. And it’s obscene too.”
It was not immediately clear whether Biden’s apparent call for Putin’s impeachment was one of the casual remarks for which he is known, or a calculated jab, one of many in the speech. But it threatens to confirm Russia’s central propaganda claim that the West, especially the United States, is determined to destroy Russia.
The White House immediately tried to downplay the comment. “The president’s point was that Putin should not exercise any power over his neighbors or the region,” a White House official told reporters. “He wasn’t talking about Putin’s power in Russia, or about regime change.”
Kremlin spokesman Dmitri S. Peskov said Mr Putin’s fate was not in the hands of the US president. “It’s not up to Biden to decide,” Peskov told reporters. “The President of Russia is elected by the Russians.”
Experts were divided on whether Mr Biden’s comment was intended to indicate that he believed Mr Putin should be impeached, a political escalation that could have repercussions on the battlefield.
Richard Haass, the chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations, said in a tweet that the White House’s attempt to reverse the president’s comment “probably couldn’t be brushed aside.”
“Putin will see it as confirmation of what he has always believed,” he wrote. “Bad discipline error that risks extending the scope and duration of the war.”
Mr Biden’s statement that Mr Putin could no longer remain in power could be interpreted “as a call for regime change,” said Michal Baranowski, a senior fellow and director of the Warsaw office of the German Marshall Fund, an unbiased policy organization. But he said he didn’t read it that way, and it was unlikely Putin would. “I think what President Biden said is, how can such a terrible person rule Russia?” said Mr. Baranowski. “In that context, I don’t think it will lead to any escalation with Russia.”
Earlier in the day, Mr Biden stood shoulder to shoulder with Polish President Andrzej Duda, assuring him that the United States viewed its support for NATO as a “sacred obligation”.
“America’s ability to fulfill its role in other parts of the world rests on a united Europe,” Mr Biden said.
While Poland’s right-wing, populist government has been embraced by Washington and Brussels as a linchpin of Western security, it has sparked feuds with both in the past. However, Mr Duda thanked Mr Biden for his support and said Poland stood by as a “serious partner, a credible partner”.
At a stadium in Warsaw, Biden met Ukrainian refugees during his first face-to-face meeting with some of the civilians caught up in a catastrophic humanitarian crisis triggered by weeks of indiscriminate Russian shelling of Ukrainian towns and villages.
After speaking with the refugees, including some from the town of Mariupol, which has been flattened by Russian shelling, Mr Biden called Mr Putin “a butcher”.
That comment also sparked a response from Mr Peskov, who told TASS, Russia’s state news agency, that “such personal insults diminish the chance” for bilateral relations with the Biden administration.
Mr Biden also met with Ukrainian ministers during his first face-to-face meeting with the country’s top leaders since the Russian invasion began on February 24. †
“We have received additional promises from the United States about how our defense cooperation will evolve,” Ukraine’s foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba told reporters, the Reuters news agency reported.
But Mr Biden gave no indication that the United States was willing to give way to its previous rejection of Ukrainian requests to impose a no-fly zone over the country or to equip it with the MIG-29 fighter jets that Poland flew a few weeks ago. had offered.
When Biden visited Poland, two rockets hit Lviv, causing residents who encountered underground shelters to rattle as smoke billowed into the air. The mayor of Lviv said a fuel storage facility was on fire and a regional administrator said five people had been injured.
Although Russian missiles hit a fighter-jet repair plant near Lviv on March 18, the city, which had a population of 700,000 before many fled the war, has been spared the airstrikes and rocket attacks that have hit other Ukrainian population centers.
Biden ended his trip one day after a senior Russian general suggested the Kremlin could redefine its goals in the war by focusing less on conquering major cities and instead on the eastern Donbas region, where Russia-backed separatists have fought the Ukrainian armed forces for eight years.
War between Russia and Ukraine: important developments
Biden’s journey comes to an end. President Biden offered a message of unity and support to Ukraine during a speech in Warsaw as he completed a three-day trip to Europe. The speech came amid reports that the Ukrainian city of Lviv had been hit by rockets just over the Polish border.
The government of Mr. Biden quietly explored the implications of Russian General Sergei Rudskoi’s statement that Mr. Putin may have been looking for a way out of the brutal invasion he launched with confidence and bravado a month ago.
According to two people with access to the intelligence community, Western intelligence agencies have picked up talks in recent weeks among senior Russian commanders about giving up the attempt to take over Kiev, the capital of Ukraine, and other key areas in the north and west of the country. take. Instead, the commanders have talked more closely about securing the Donbas region.
Military analysts have warned that General Rudkoi’s statement could be deceptive as Russian forces regroup for another offensive.
Just weeks ago, Mr Putin threatened to absorb Ukraine completely, warning: “The current leaders must understand that if they continue to do what they are doing, they risk the future of the Ukrainian state.”
In the latest case of nuclear weapons clatter, Dmitri A. Medvedev, the deputy chairman of the Russian Security Council, reiterated Moscow’s willingness to use nuclear weapons against the United States and Europe if their survival was threatened.
“No one wants war, especially given that nuclear war would threaten the survival of human civilization,” Mr Medvedev told Russia’s state news agency RIA Novosti in excerpts from an interview published Saturday.
Hoping to unite his country and encourage negotiations with Moscow, Mr Zelensky said the success of a Ukrainian counter-offensive that began two weeks ago “led the Russian leadership to a simple and logical idea: talk is necessary”.
For now, large swaths of Ukraine remain a battleground in what increasingly resembles a bloody stalemate between the smaller Ukrainian army and Russian forces grappling with logistical problems.
On Saturday, Russian troops invaded the small northern town of Slavutych, near the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, seized the hospital and briefly detained the mayor, a regional military official said.
In response, dozens of residents unfurled the Ukrainian flag in front of city hall and chanted “glory to Ukraine,” prompting Russian troops to fire and toss stun grenades into the air, according to videos and the official, Oleksandr Pavliuk.
Michael D. Shear and David E. Sanger reported from Warsaw and Michael Levenson From New York. Reporting contributed by Megan Special from Krakow, Poland, Anton Trojanovskic from Istanbul, Valerie Hopkins from Lviv, Ukraine, Eric Schmitt from Washington and Apoorva Mandavilli From New York.
