US President Joe Biden on Saturday castigated Russian President Vladimir Putin over the month-old war in Ukraine, bluntly calling him “a butcher” who “cannot remain in power.”
In an impassioned speech from the Royal Castle in Warsaw, delivered after meeting top Ukrainian ministers in Poland and earlier conferring with NATO and EU allies on the conflict, Biden plainly warned Russia: “Don’t even think about moving on one single inch of NATO territory.”
Although the White House moved quickly to temper Biden’s unprecedented comments on Putin — saying the US leader is not seeking “regime change” in Russia and was referring to Putin’s influence over neighbors in the region — the Kremlin made its displeasure clear.
Photo: AP
Personal attacks were “narrowing down the window of opportunity” for bilateral relations, an official said.
French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday warned against a verbal “escalation” of Russia’s invasion in Ukraine.
Macron said he would speak to Putin in the next two days to organize the evacuation of civilians from the heavily bombarded port city of Mariupol.
The French leader told broadcaster France 3 that he saw his task as “achieving first a ceasefire and then the total withdrawal of [Russian] troops by diplomatic means.”
“If we want to do that, we can’t escalate either in words or actions,” he added.
Biden coupled his harsh words for Putin with a pointed attempt to appeal to ordinary Russians, saying they were “not our enemy” and urging them to blame their president for the heavy sanctions imposed by the West.
He offered reassurance to Ukrainians in the audience and elsewhere, at a time when nearly 4 million of them have been driven out of their country.
“We stand with you,” he said.
Biden also cast doubt on Russia’s signal that it might scale down its war aims to concentrate on eastern Ukraine — even as two Russian missile strikes slammed into the west of the country.
The US president said he was “not sure” Moscow has indeed changed its objectives, which, so far, he said had resulted in “strategic failure.”
Two Russian missiles earlier struck a fuel depot in western Ukraine’s Lviv, a rare attack on a city just 70km from the Polish border that has escaped serious fighting.
At least five people were wounded, Lviv Governor Maksym Kozytsky said, as Agence France-Presse (AFP) journalists in the city center saw plumes of thick black smoke.
Biden, who was winding up a whirlwind visit to Poland after holding a series of urgent summits in Brussels with Western allies, earlier met Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Dmytro Kuleba and Ukrainian Minister of Defense Oleksii Reznikov in Warsaw in an emphatic show of support for Kyiv.
Both ministers had made a rare trip out of Ukraine for the face-to-face talks, in a potential sign of growing confidence in their battle against Russian forces.
In a possible shift on a plan to transfer Soviet-era fighter jets from Poland to Kyiv to boost Ukraine’s firepower in the skies — rejected last month by the Pentagon as too “high-risk” — Kuleba said the US now did not object.
“As far as we can conclude, the ball is now on the Polish side,” Kuleba said in written comments to AFP after the meeting.
In a video address, Zelenskiy reiterated a call for planes while urging allies to supply Ukraine with more weapons.
‘DANGEROUS GAME’: Legislative Yuan budget cuts have already become a point of discussion for Democrats and Republicans in Washington, Elbridge Colby said Taiwan’s fall to China “would be a disaster for American interests” and Taipei must raise defense spending to deter Beijing, US President Donald Trump’s pick to lead Pentagon policy, Elbridge Colby, said on Tuesday during his US Senate confirmation hearing. The nominee for US undersecretary of defense for policy told the Armed Services Committee that Washington needs to motivate Taiwan to avoid a conflict with China and that he is “profoundly disturbed” about its perceived reluctance to raise defense spending closer to 10 percent of GDP. Colby, a China hawk who also served in the Pentagon in Trump’s first team,
SEPARATE: The MAC rebutted Beijing’s claim that Taiwan is China’s province, asserting that UN Resolution 2758 neither mentions Taiwan nor grants the PRC authority over it The “status quo” of democratic Taiwan and autocratic China not belonging to each other has long been recognized by the international community, the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said yesterday in its rebuttal of Beijing’s claim that Taiwan can only be represented in the UN as “Taiwan, Province of China.” Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) yesterday at a news conference of the third session at the 14th National People’s Congress said that Taiwan can only be referred to as “Taiwan, Province of China” at the UN. Taiwan is an inseparable part of Chinese territory, which is not only history but
CROSSED A LINE: While entertainers working in China have made pro-China statements before, this time it seriously affected the nation’s security and interests, a source said The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) late on Saturday night condemned the comments of Taiwanese entertainers who reposted Chinese statements denigrating Taiwan’s sovereignty. The nation’s cross-strait affairs authority issued the statement after several Taiwanese entertainers, including Patty Hou (侯佩岑), Ouyang Nana (歐陽娜娜) and Michelle Chen (陳妍希), on Friday and Saturday shared on their respective Sina Weibo (微博) accounts a post by state broadcaster China Central Television. The post showed an image of a map of Taiwan along with the five stars of the Chinese flag, and the message: “Taiwan is never a country. It never was and never will be.” The post followed remarks
INVESTMENT WATCH: The US activity would not affect the firm’s investment in Taiwan, where 11 production lines would likely be completed this year, C.C. Wei said Investments by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) in the US should not be a cause for concern, but rather seen as the moment that the company and Taiwan stepped into the global spotlight, President William Lai (賴清德) told a news conference at the Presidential Office in Taipei yesterday alongside TSMC chairman and chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家). Wei and US President Donald Trump in Washington on Monday announced plans to invest US$100 billion in the US to build three advanced foundries, two packaging plants, and a research and development center, after Trump threatened to slap tariffs on chips made
RSS