President Biden’s recent controversial coda regarding Vladimir Putin is decidedly not the most egregious words spoken about the war in Ukraine.
After delivering a series of masterful speeches across Europe last week, President Biden closed his public remarks in Warsaw with nine contentious non-scripted words: “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power.” White House officials clarified almost immediately — and consistently over the next several days — that the president was not advocating regime change or any other such U.S. policy shift, but rather giving voice to his own personal “moral outrage” that Putin should continue to wield his power in such a brutal fashion. The president has since declared that he stands by his expression of personal outrage, and it’s an emotional reaction I’m sure most of us share, even if we agree that actually strolling or sneaking into another country and murdering or forcibly ejecting their leader is wrong and would make us no better than Putin. A lot has already been written and said about the prudence — or lack thereof — of President Biden stating this out loud. I won’t add to that discussion, which has already been pretty fully fleshed out anyways. What I want to focus on is the Russian government’s (supposed) outrage at Biden’s words:
"That's not for Biden to decide. The president of Russia is elected by Russians."
So said Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov to the Reuters news agency on March 26th when asked for comment. And he’s 100% correct. Russia is a sovereign state. Every country — including Russia — has the right determine its own leadership, and no country should decide who rules another. (We’ll set aside for now the thorny question of whether or not Russian voters are truly able to choose their own leaders freely.)
Now, it’s fair to point out that Western countries generally and America particularly have not always respected the principal of state sovereignty. Thankfully both public attitudes and official public policy on this matter seem to be turning away from such strategies, if slowly.
HOWEVER (and it’s a big “however”): As relates to this conflict specifically at least, the Russian government is the only one actually disrespecting another state’s sovereignty and actively seeking regime change. They stated as much — publicly — at the outset of their invasion: they claim the Ukrainian government is rife with corruption and Nazism and must therefore be taken out.
But Ukrainian citizens voted for Volodymyr Zelensky in truly overwhelming numbers — he won a whopping 73% of votes in 2019, and his approval rating within the country today hovers at just over 90%. If Russia is so adamantly against the idea of regime change, and so desirous that state sovereignty be respected, just what are they doing rolling into a sovereign neighbor’s territory with the aim of deposing their democratically elected leader?
So to the Kremlin, I would say:
it’s not for putin to decide. The president of ukraine is elected by ukrainians.
If President Biden’s remark — seemingly, initially, a comment on Russia’s sovereignty — was ill advised and problematic with a little or medium “p”, so to speak, President Putin’s decision to brazenly and violently attack Ukraine’s sovereignty is Problematic to a stunningly large degree.
And that is what we should all be truly outraged at.
