US President Joe Biden slammed his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin’s ‘craven lust for land and power’ ahead of the one-year anniversary of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Biden condemned Putin by name in remarks from Warsaw, Poland, three days before the anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

‘When President Putin ordered his tanks to roll in Ukraine he thought we would roll over. He was wrong,’ Biden told thousands before the Polish Presidential Palace on Tuesday.

‘The Ukrainian people are too brave. America, Europe, a coalition of nations for the Atlantic to the Pacific, we were too unified. Democracy was too strong.’

To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a webbrowser thatsupports HTML5video

Biden said Putin ‘no longer doubts the strength of our coalition’ but that he ‘doubts our continued support for Ukraine’ and the unification of NATO. The US president assured that ‘NATO will not be divided, and we will not tire’.

‘President Putin’s craven lust for land and power will fail. And the Ukrainian people’s love for their country will prevail,’ Biden said.

‘Democracies in the world will stand guard over freedom today, tomorrow and forever. For that’s what it’s – that’s what’s at stake here: Freedom.’

Biden delivered his remarks a day after making a surprise visit to Kyiv, during which he stood alongside Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and announced $460million more in military aid.

The US notified the Kremlin of Biden’s surprise visit ‘some hours before his departure for deconfliction purposes’, according to White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan.

On Tuesday, Biden said the world a year ago ‘was bracing for the fall of Kyiv’. But, ‘I can report that Kyiv stands strong’, he said.

Biden concluded that the world is at ‘an inflection point’ and that decisions in the next five years will shape the decades to come.

‘While decisions are ours to make now, the principles and the stakes are eternal,’ Biden said. ‘The choice between chaos and stability, between building and destroying between hope and fear, between democracy lifting up the human spirit – and the brutal hand of the dictator who crushes it.’

Biden ripped Putin, but did not call for him to be ousted.

Hours earlier, Putin told Russia’s parliament that the country would no longer participate in the New START nuclear arms treaty with the US. It was the last major arms control agreement between the two superpowers. Russia will suspend, but not withdraw from the treaty.

Putin did not mention Biden by name in his announcement.

Biden’s speech was not intended as a response to Putin, but rather coincided with the one-year anniversary of the war on Friday, according to Sullivan.

‘We did not set the speech up as some kind of head to head, this is not a rhetorical contest with anyone else,’ Sullivan said. ‘This is an affirmative statement of values, a vision for what the world we’re both trying to build and defend should look like.’

Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at [email protected].

For more stories like this, check our news page.

Source: Read Full Article