'Putin cannot stay in power': White House clarifies Biden's remarks, says 'not calling for regime change'

The White House has said that President Biden was not calling for regime change when he said Vladimir Putin "cannot remain in power."

"The president's point was that Putin cannot be allowed to exercise power over his neighbours or the region," an official said.

The Kremlin responded by saying: "That's not for Biden to decide - the president of Russia is elected by Russians."

The unscripted remark, which the White House scrambled to walk back as the Kremlin expressed fury, came at the end of an otherwise resolute and fiery speech rallying the free world to unite in opposition to autocracy and support of Ukraine.

Richard Haass, the Council on Foreign Relations president, tweeted his concerns that Biden had 'just expanded US war aims, calling for regime change.'

'However desirable it may be, it is not within our power to accomplish-plus runs risk it will increase Putin's inclination to see this as a fight to the finish, raising odds he will reject compromise, escalate, or both,' wrote Haass.

'Our interests are to end the war on terms Ukraine can accept & to discourage Russian escalation. Today's call for regime change is inconsistent with these ends,' he added.

“For God’s sake this man cannot remain in power,” the US president said, apparently calling for regime change in Moscow at the end of a speech from Poland on Saturday.

He said “if you’re able to listen: you, the Russian people, are not our enemy” before evoking the Nazi’s siege of Leningrad and likening it to the atrocities in Ukraine.

“These are not the actions of a great nation,” Mr Biden said, in front of the Royal Castle, a landmark in Warsaw that was badly damaged during Adolf Hitler’s war.

“Of all people, you the Russian people, as well as all people across Europe still have the memory of being in a similar situation in the 30s and 40s, the situation of World War Two, still fresh in the mind of many grandparents in the region.”

He chided Russia's actions saying, "It's nothing less than a direct challenge to the rules-based international order established since the end of World War II, and it threatens to return to decades of war that ravaged Europe before the international rule-based order was put in place. We cannot go back to that. We cannot."

Furthermore, Biden talked of the sanctions and other economic steps that are taken in order to pressurize Russia and target the Russian economy.

Russia launched its invasion last month after recognizing the Ukrainian breakaway regions of Donetsk and Luhansk as "independent republics." Russia has since continued to maintain that the aim of its operations has been to "demilitarize" and "de-nazify" the country.