Biden Calls for Regime Change in Moscow

March 26, 2022 (EIRNS)—In a speech described by the New York Times as a “a forceful denunciation” of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s military operation in Ukraine, President Joe Biden declared at the end, apparently ad lib: “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power.” He cast the war as the “test of all time” in a decades-long battle to defend democracy. White House officials scrambled to walk Biden’s remarks back from what strongly appears to be a demand for regime change in Moscow. “The President’s point was that Putin cannot be allowed to exercise power over his neighbors or the region,” a White House official said in a statement to reporters. “He was not discussing Putin’s power in Russia, or regime change.”

“Russia’s choice of war is an example of one of the oldest human impulses—using brute force and disinformation to satisfy a craving for absolute power and control,” Biden declared before a crowd of hundreds of people. “In this battle, we need to be clear: This battle will not be won in days or months either. We need to steel ourselves for the long fight ahead.”

Biden was particularly incensed at Putin’s call for the denazification of Ukraine. Biden called that claim “a lie,” invoking the already-discredited argument that President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is Jewish and his father’s family was killed in the Holocaust. “It’s just cynical. He knows that. And it’s also obscene,” Mr. Biden said.

Aside from that, Biden described the war in Ukraine as an extension of the Soviet Union’s history of oppression and war against democracy going back to Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968. “Today, Russia has strangled democracy and sought to do so elsewhere,” he said.