The leaders of the United States and Russia delivered blistering, contradictory addresses in Eastern Europe on Tuesday, showcasing starkly opposing worldviews as they spoke on the eve of the first anniversary of a Ukraine war that has set the two superpowers increasingly at odds.
President Biden, speaking to an enthusiastic crowd outside Poland’s Royal Castle, urged the world’s nations to recommit to a unified defense of Ukraine, saying global democracy is at stake and accusing Russia of committing crimes against humanity through its “abhorrent” acts against civilians.
A few hours earlier, Russian President Vladimir Putin, addressing a joint session of the Russian parliament, reiterated his attacks on what he called Ukraine’s “neo-Nazi regime” and, in a dramatic move, announced that Moscow was suspending its participation in New START, the last remaining U.S.-Russia nuclear arms agreement.
U.S. officials said that the timing of the two speeches was coincidental and that Biden had decided long ago to travel to the region for the first anniversary of the brutal war. But if the president did not plan his remarks as a response to Putin’s, they nonetheless often sounded like a rebuttal of the Russian president.
Putin said during his televised state of the nation address that Western elites “started” the conflict in conjunction with Ukraine. Biden, in his address, responded that it was Putin who “chose this war,” adding, “The West was not plotting to attack Russia, as Putin said today.”
Biden also used soaring terms to cast the war, as he has before, as one front in a worldwide struggle between autocracy and democracy.
“When Russia invaded, it wasn’t just Ukraine being tested. The whole world faced a test for the ages,” Biden said before a large crowd on a cold night with a colorful backdrop. “Europe was being tested. America was being tested. NATO is being tested. All democracies are being tested. And the questions we face are as simple as they are profound: Would we respond, or would we look the other way?”
He added: “One year later, we know the answer. We did respond. We would be strong, we would be united, and the world would not look the other way.”
Biden seemed to relish the opportunity to create the contrast with Putin. He mocked him and criticized him. He called him a failed leader who had badly miscalculated. And while Biden, in the same place a year ago, ad-libbed a phrase that his aides quickly walked back — “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power” — Tuesday’s speech suggested that he still holds that belief.
“President Putin’s craven lust for land and power will fail, and the Ukrainian people’s love for their country will prevail,” he said.In Putin’s telling, in contrast, Russia is not an autocratic power that attacked a neighboring country without provocation, but a victimized nation targeted by the United States and the West. “Our relations have degraded, and that’s completely and utterly the U.S.’s fault,” Putin said.