President Joe Biden is urging democracies around the world to unify and commit to a long fight against authoritarian aggression.

What Happened: In his speech on Saturday, during the last leg of the trip to Poland, Biden said that Russian President Vladimir Putin should no longer remain in office, following his invasion of Ukraine. 

“For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power,” Biden announced at the conclusion of a capstone address delivered outside the Royal Castle in Warsaw.

Biden condemned Putin throughout the speech, accusing the Russian president of “using brute force and disinformation to satisfy a craving for absolute power and control.”

He attacked Putin for invoking Nazi imagery as a pretext for an invasion, calling it an “obscene” lie. And he said it is “Putin who is to blame” for the mountain of international sanctions that are crushing Russia’s economy and its currency, noting that the Russian rubble has been reduced to “rubble.”

During his speech, Biden issued a stern warning and said to Putin: “Don’t even think about moving on one single inch of NATO territory.” He said the U.S. was committed to the collective protection obligations laid out in NATO’s charter “with the full force of our collective power.”

“American forces are not in Europe to engage in conflict with Russian forces, American forces are here to defend NATO,” he said.

Ukraine War Continues: Just before Biden was set to speak in Poland, an airstrike struck a fuel depot outside Lviv, Ukraine — about 200 miles away from where the President would speak.

“America’s ability to meet its role in other parts of the world rests upon a united Europe and a secure Europe,” Biden said Saturday as he met with Polish President Andrzej Duda. 

“We have learned from sad experiences in two world wars, when we’ve stayed out of and not been involved in stability in Europe, it always comes back to haunt the United States,” he added.  

Biden also met Ukrainian government officials who had travelled to Warsaw for engagements with their American counterparts. 

Biden’s visit to Europe has been entirely focused on the war, but the talks with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba and Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov were the first time Biden was able to meet face-to-face with officials from Ukraine during his tour.

Photo: Courtesy of Global Panorama and Gage Skidmore on Flickr