[U.S. President Joe Biden speaks during an event at the Royal Castle, amid Russia's invasion of Ukraine, in Warsaw, Poland March 26, 2022. The remark looks likely to further fuel concerns among Putin's closest circle that Washington wants him ousted and to impose its own views on Russia and the world. (File Photo by=REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein)]

LONDON: The Kremlin said on Monday (Mar 28) that US President Joe Biden's remark that Vladimir Putin "cannot remain in power" was a cause for alarm, in a measured response to a public call from the United States for an end to Putin's 22-year rule, Reuters reported.
 
"For God's sake, this man cannot remain in power," Biden said on Saturday at the end of a speech to a crowd in Warsaw. He cast Russia's invasion of Ukraine as a battle in a much broader conflict between democracy and autocracy. The White House tried to clarify Biden's remarks and the US president said on Sunday he had not been publicly calling for regime change in Russia, which is the world's largest country by area and has more nuclear warheads than any other. Asked about Biden's comment, which received little coverage on Russian state television, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: "This is a statement that is certainly alarming."
 
Putin has not commented publicly on Biden's remark. The Kremlin says Putin is a democratically elected leader and that it is for the Russian people, not Washington, to decide who leads their country. But such a blunt remark from Biden appeared to have breached the norms of US-Russian and even US-Soviet relations. No US leader has publicly called for the departure of any Kremlin chief for decades.