Biden denounces Russian invasion, casting it as part of a decades-long attempt to crush democracies.

WARSAW — President Biden delivered a forceful denunciation of Vladimir V. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, declaring “for God’s sake, this man can not stay in energy” and casting the conflict because the “check of all time” in a decades-long battle to defend democracy.

Administration officers have been cautious to not trace at Mr. Putin’s removing from workplace, understanding that it will be taken by the Kremlin as a harmful escalation. Shortly after Mr. Biden’s speech concluded, the White Home insisted that the president was not calling for regime change.

“The president’s level was that Putin can’t be allowed to train energy over his neighbors or the area,” officers mentioned in an announcement to reporters. “He was not discussing Putin’s energy in Russia, or regime change.”

In a speech from a fort that served for hundreds of years as a house for Polish monarchs, Mr. Biden drew a stark line between the forces of liberty and oppression on the planet. He described the face-off with Mr. Putin as a second he has lengthy warned about: a conflict of competing international ideologies.

“Russia’s selection of conflict is an instance one of many oldest human impulses — utilizing brute pressure and disinformation to fulfill a yearning for absolute energy and management,” he declared earlier than a crowd of lots of of individuals. “On this battle, we should be clear: this battle is not going to be gained in days or months both. We have to metal ourselves for the lengthy battle forward.”

The president unleashed an indignant tirade towards Mr. Putin for the declare that his invasion is meant to “de-Nazify” Ukraine. Mr. Biden known as that declare “a lie,” noting that President Volodymyr Zelensky is Jewish and his father’s household was killed within the Holocaust.

“It’s simply cynical. He is aware of that. And it’s additionally obscene,” Mr. Biden mentioned.

Mr. Biden mentioned the conflict in Ukraine was nothing lower than an extension of the Soviet Union’s lengthy historical past of oppression, courting again to its navy invasions of Hungary, Poland and Czechoslovakia within the Nineteen Fifties and Nineteen Sixties to finish pro-democracy actions, following the top of World Struggle II.

These international locations gained their freedom from the Soviet Union, he mentioned, however mentioned that “the battle for democracy didn’t conclude with the top of the Chilly Struggle.”

“Right now, Russia has strangled democracy and sought to take action elsewhere,” he mentioned.

The president spoke on to Russia’s residents: ‘Let me say this if you happen to’re capable of hear,” he mentioned. “You the Russian individuals are not our enemy.” He described the horrors suffered by Ukrainian individuals through the previous month. “These aren’t the actions of an excellent nation.”