Kremlin Says Biden S Remark On The End Of Putin Is Alarming

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Biden says Putin can not stay in power Russia says the observation is worrying The United States underestimates Biden’s observation “Expect a long war,” says Deripaska

LONDON, March 28 (Reuters) – The Kremlin said on Monday that US President Joe Biden’s remark that Vladimir Putin “could not stay in power” was a wake-up call, a cautious response to the first US public termination call. of 22 years of Putin’s rule. “In the name of God, this man can not stay in power,” Biden said at the end of his speech to a crowd in Warsaw on Saturday. He saw Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as a battle in a much wider conflict between democracy and totalitarianism. The White House sought to clarify Biden’s remarks, and the US president said Sunday that he had not publicly called for regime change in Russia, which has more nuclear warheads than any other power. Sign up now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com Register Asked about Biden’s comment, which received little coverage on Russian state television, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peshkov said: “This is a statement that is certainly worrying.” “We will continue to monitor the US president’s statements more closely,” Peshkov told reporters. Putin has not publicly commented on Biden’s remark – which comes amid Moscow’s biggest confrontation with the West since the end of the Cold War. In his first live appearance since the observation, Putin appeared on public television on Monday to be briefed by Alexander Sergeev, president of the Russian Academy of Sciences, on the accumulation of carbon in mollusks and the use of artificial intelligence to decipher ancient Tibetan manuscripts. Biden last year called Putin a “murderer.” Following the comment, Biden called Putin, who later said he was pleased with the US leader’s explanation for the remarks. ‘STATUS CHANGE’? However, such a blunt remark by Biden on the need to end Putin’s rule seemed to violate the rules of US-Russian relations and also, paradoxically, align with the narrative of former KGB spies who are Putin’s closest circle. in the Kremlin. “It’s unusual for a president to talk about regime change so bluntly,” William Wohlforth, a government professor at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, told Reuters. “But it would not seem so unusual from the point of view of Putin’s propaganda, as he often describes it as a target of US foreign policy,” Wohlforth said. Putin’s inner circle, including Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev, the former head of the Federal Security Service, has long argued that the United States is planning a revolution in Russia. Dmitry Medvedev, who served as president from 2008 to 2012, said on March 23 that the world could lead to a nuclear dystopia if Washington continued what the Kremlin considers a long-term conspiracy to destroy Russia. read more Medvedev painted a bleak picture of a post-Putin Russia, saying it could lead to unstable leadership in Moscow “with a maximum number of nuclear weapons aimed at the United States and Europe.” IDEOLOGICAL WAR Putin, Russia’s top leader since Boris Yeltsin resigned on the last day of 1999, sees the war in Ukraine as necessary to protect his country’s vital interests against the United States, which he says are turning to world hegemony. He is particularly keen to nullify Ukraine’s hopes of joining NATO. Ukraine says it is fighting for its own survival against a Russian imperial-type land grab that has divided the two largest Eastern Slavic peoples. Biden’s remarks about the end of Putin’s rule overshadowed a speech that had a much broader theme: the struggle between democracy and totalitarianism. This shows a much bigger war, according to Russian aluminum tycoon Oleg Deripaska. read more “Now there is a kind of hellish ideological mobilization on all sides,” he said on Sunday. “It seems that all sides are recklessly preparing for a long-term war that will have tragic consequences for the whole world,” said Deripaska, who has been sanctioned by the United States and Britain. Under the constitutional changes approved in 2020, Putin, who turns 70 this year, could run for another six-year term as president, allowing him to remain in power until 2036. The Kremlin says Putin is a democratically elected leader and that it is up to the Russian people, not Washington, to decide who leads his country. Sign up now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com Register Report by Reuters. curated by Guy Faulconbridge and Gareth Jones Our role models: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.