Kremlin Says Biden's Remark on the End of Putin Is 'Alarming'

President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin meet at the "Villa la Grange" in Geneva in June 2021. (AP)
President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin meet at the "Villa la Grange" in Geneva in June 2021. (AP)
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Kremlin Says Biden's Remark on the End of Putin Is 'Alarming'

President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin meet at the "Villa la Grange" in Geneva in June 2021. (AP)
President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin meet at the "Villa la Grange" in Geneva in June 2021. (AP)

The Kremlin said on Monday that US President Joe Biden's remark that Vladimir Putin "cannot remain in power" was a cause for alarm, a guarded response to the first public call from the United States for an end to Putin's 22-year rule.

"For God's sake, this man cannot remain in power," Biden said on Saturday at the end of a speech to a crowd in Warsaw. He cast Russia's invasion of Ukraine as a battle in a much broader conflict between democracy and autocracy.

The White House tried to clarify Biden's remarks and the US president said on Sunday he had not been publicly calling for regime change in Russia, which has more nuclear warheads than any other power.

Asked about Biden's comment, which received little coverage on Russian state television, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: "This is a statement that is certainly alarming."

"We will continue to track the statements of the US president in the most attentive way," Peskov told reporters.

Putin has not commented publicly 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 remark, Putin was shown on state television on Monday being briefed by Alexander Sergeev, president of the Russian Academy of Sciences, on the accumulation of carbon in molluscs and the use of artificial intelligence to decipher ancient Tibetan manuscripts.

Biden last year cast Putin as "a killer". After that comment, Biden phoned Putin who then said he was satisfied with the US leader's explanation for the remark.

'Regime change'?

Such a blunt remark from Biden on the need to end Putin's power, however, appeared to breach the norms of US-Russian relations and also, bizarrely, align with the narrative of the former KGB spies who form Putin's closest circle in the Kremlin.

"It is unusual for the president to talk about regime change so bluntly," William Wohlforth, professor of government at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, told Reuters.

"But it wouldn't seem that unusual from the perspective of Putin's propaganda as he often describes that as the goal of US foreign policy," Wohlforth said.

Putin's inner circle, including Security Council chief Nikolai Patrushev, previously head of the powerful Federal Security Service spy agency, has long argued that the United States is plotting a revolution in Russia.

Dmitry Medvedev, who served as president from 2008 to 2012, said on March 23 the world could spiral towards a nuclear dystopia if Washington pressed on with what the Kremlin casts as a long-term plot to destroy Russia.

Medvedev painted a grim picture of a post-Putin Russia, saying it could lead to an unstable leadership in Moscow "with a maximum number of nuclear weapons aimed at targets in the United States and Europe".

Ideological war

Putin, Russia's paramount leader since Boris Yeltsin resigned on the last day of 1999, casts the war in Ukraine as necessary to protect his country's vital interests in the face of a United States he says is bent on world hegemony. He is particularly keen to quash Ukraine's hopes of joining NATO.

Ukraine says it is fighting for its very survival against a Russian imperial-style land grab that has divided the two biggest Eastern Slav peoples.

Biden's remark on ending Putin's rule overshadowed a speech which had a much broader theme: the battle between democracy and autocracy.

That indicates a much longer war, according to Russian aluminum tycoon Oleg Deripaska.

"Now some sort of hellish ideological mobilization is underway from all sides," he said on Sunday.

"It appears all sides are recklessly gearing up for a long-term war that will have tragic consequences for the entire world," said Deripaska, who has been sanctioned by the United States and Britain.

Under constitutional changes approved in 2020, Putin, who turns 70 this year, could seek election for two more six-year terms as president, allowing him to stay in power until 2036.

The Kremlin says Putin is a democratically elected leader and that it is for the Russian people, not Washington, to decide who leads their country.



Danish General Says He Is Not Losing Sleep over US Plans for Greenland

FILE - A view of a Greenland flag in the village of Igaliku in Greenland, Friday, July 5, 2024. (Ida Marie Odgaard/ Ritzau Scanpix via AP, File)
FILE - A view of a Greenland flag in the village of Igaliku in Greenland, Friday, July 5, 2024. (Ida Marie Odgaard/ Ritzau Scanpix via AP, File)
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Danish General Says He Is Not Losing Sleep over US Plans for Greenland

FILE - A view of a Greenland flag in the village of Igaliku in Greenland, Friday, July 5, 2024. (Ida Marie Odgaard/ Ritzau Scanpix via AP, File)
FILE - A view of a Greenland flag in the village of Igaliku in Greenland, Friday, July 5, 2024. (Ida Marie Odgaard/ Ritzau Scanpix via AP, File)

The head of Denmark's Arctic command said the prospect of a US takeover of Greenland was not keeping him up at night after talks with a senior US general last week but that more must be done to deter any Russian attack on the Arctic island.

US President Donald Trump has repeatedly suggested the United States might acquire Greenland, a vast semi-autonomous Danish territory on the shortest route between North America and Europe vital for the US ballistic missile warning system.

Trump has not ruled out taking the territory by force and, at a congressional hearing this month, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth did not deny that such contingency plans exist.

Such a scenario "is absolutely not on my mind," Soren Andersen, head of Denmark's Joint Arctic Command, told Reuters in an interview, days after what he said was his first meeting with the general overseeing US defense of the area.

"I sleep perfectly well at night," Anderson said. "Militarily, we work together, as we always have."

US General Gregory Guillot visited the US Pituffik Space Base in Greenland on June 19-20 for the first time since the US moved Greenland oversight to the Northern command from its European command, the Northern Command said on Tuesday.

Andersen's interview with Reuters on Wednesday were his first detailed comments to media since his talks with Guillot, which coincided with Danish military exercises on Greenland involving one of its largest military presences since the Cold War.

Russian and Chinese state vessels have appeared unexpectedly around Greenland in the past and the Trump administration has accused Denmark of failing to keep it safe from potential incursions. Both countries have denied any such plans.

Andersen said the threat level to Greenland had not increased this year. "We don't see Russian or Chinese state ships up here," he said.

DOG SLED PATROLS

Denmark's permanent presence consists of four ageing inspection vessels, a small surveillance plane, and dog sled patrols tasked with monitoring an area four times the size of France.

Previously focused on demonstrating its presence and civilian tasks like search and rescue, and fishing inspection, the Joint Arctic Command is now shifting more towards territorial defense, Andersen said.

"In reality, Greenland is not that difficult to defend," he said. "Relatively few points need defending, and of course, we have a plan for that. NATO has a plan for that."

As part of the military exercises this month, Denmark has deployed a frigate, F-16s, special forces and extra troops, and increased surveillance around critical infrastructure. They would leave next week when the exercises end, Andersen said, adding that he would like to repeat them in the coming months.

"To keep this area conflict-free, we have to do more, we need to have a credible deterrent," he said. "If Russia starts to change its behavior around Greenland, I have to be able to act on it."

In January, Denmark pledged over $2 billion to strengthen its Arctic defense, including new Arctic navy vessels, long-range drones, and satellite coverage. France offered to deploy troops to Greenland and EU's top military official said it made sense to station troops from EU countries there.

Around 20,000 people live in the capital Nuuk, with the rest of Greenland's 57,000 population spread across 71 towns, mostly on the west coast. The lack of infrastructure elsewhere is a deterrent in itself, Andersen said.

"If, for example, there were to be a Russian naval landing on the east coast, I think it wouldn't be long before such a military operation would turn into a rescue mission," he said.