President Joe Biden hit back at Vladimir Putin on Tuesday evening, blasting his claim that U.S. wanted to ‘destroy Russia’ and saying that the war in Ukraine was entirely the Russian president’s doing.
He dismissed Putin as a dictator who was bound to lose as he delivered a speech in Warsaw, Poland, to mark the anniversary of the invasion of Ukraine and rally support for the fight against Russia.
‘The United States and the nations of Europe do not seek to control or destroy Russia,’ Biden said to cheers in the grounds of Warsaw’s Royal Castle.
‘The West was not plotting to attack Russia, as Putin said today and millions of Russian citizens only want to live in peace with their neighbours are not the enemy.
‘This war was never a necessity. It’s a tragedy.’
He delivered his speech a day after making a surprise visit to the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, and hours after Russian President Vladimir Putin delivered a long-delayed state-of-the-nation address.
The result was a face-off that could have from come from the height of the Cold War as East and West delivered dueling speeches. Putin accused Washington of sparking the war, before Biden hit back.
The sense of occasion was only intensified by the size of the crowd awaiting Biden in cold gloom of the Polish evening. The Warsaw mayor’s office claimed it was 30,000-strong.
He accused the Russian leader of war crimes on a colossal scale. But after the dark days of a year ago, at times it sounded like a victory rally.
‘One year ago, the world was bracing for the fall of Kyiv,’ Biden told the packed crowd. ‘Well I just came from a visit to Kyiv, and I can report Kyiv stands strong.
‘Kyiv stands proud, it stands tall and, most important, it stands free.’
After Putin’s state of the nation address, this amounted to a state of Kyiv speech.
The speech offered a chance to riff on one of Biden’s key ideological themes: That authoritarian regimes are fragile in the face of democracy.
‘Autocrats only understand one word no, no, no,’ he said.
‘No, you will not take my country. No, you will not take my freedom.
‘No, you will not take my future.
‘And I’ll repeat tonight what I said last year, the same place. A dictator bent on rebuilding an empire will never be able to ease the people’s love of liberty.
‘Brutality will never grind down the will of the free.
‘And Ukraine … Ukraine will never be a victory for Russia, never.’
His speech reflected just how much the region has changed since Biden visited a little under a year ago. Then Kyiv appeared to be on the brink of disaster, as Russian troops advance in a lightning assault.
Now the city is safe enough for a sitting American president to visit, allowing a very visual show of support.
Yet on Tuesday evening he still warned that there were ‘hard and very bitter days, victories and tragedies’ ahead but promised that the U.S. would not waver in its support for Ukraine.
‘There should be no doubt our support for Ukraine will not waver, NATO will not be divided. And we will not tire,’ he said.
‘President Putin’s craving, lust for land and power will fail.’
Coldplay’s ‘Sky full of Stars’ played at the end of the speech, and Biden posed for pictures with supporters waving Ukrainian and Polish flags.
‘Stay strong,’ he said to the crowd as he left.
He met with Polish President Andrzej Duda at the presidential palace earlier, where he set out once again the United States’ dedication to European security and to Ukraine.
‘We have to have security in Europe,’ he said. ‘It’s that basic, that simple, that consequential.’
‘A year later, I would argue that NATO is stronger than it’s ever been,’ he said. ‘As I told President Zelensky while we spoke in Kyiv yesterday I can proudly say that our support for Ukraine remains unwavering.’
Biden arrived in Warsaw late on Monday night, after making the 10-hour train journey back from Kyiv.
There he delighted locals by announcing a fresh round of arms deliveries, recommitting the U.S. to its support of Ukraine, and making an open-air walkabout to honor the country’s fallen soldiers.
Officials said Biden only signed off on the trip after a security briefing in the Oval Office on Friday.
‘I thought it was critical that there not be any doubt, none whatsoever, about US support for Ukraine in the war,’ said Biden as he sat for talks with President Volodomyr Zelensky soon arriving.
‘The Ukrainian people have stepped up in a way that few people ever have in the past.’
Duda introduced Biden ahead of his speech on Tuesday, and described how he had made a ‘spectactular’ gesture with his visit.
‘He put his foot on Ukrainian soil, where war is raging,’ said the Polish president. ‘He demonstrated that a free world and its leader is not afraid of anything.
‘He showed that Ukraine is not alone.’
The visit infuriated Russia. And Putin used a long-planned speech to accuse the West of sowing war and instability.
‘It’s they who have started the war,’ he told an audience of lawmakers. ‘And we are using force to end it.’
Flanked by four Russian tricolor flags, Putin said the U.S. and its allies were sowing chaos and war.
‘The people of Ukraine have become the hostage of the Kyiv regime and its Western overlords, who have effectively occupied this country in the political, military and economic sense,’ he said.
And he used the occasion to say that he was suspending Russia’s participation in the New START Treaty, the last major arms control treaty between Moscow and Washington.
SOURCE: dailymail.co.uk
