U.S. Officials Rush to Clarify Biden’s Comment on Russia’s Putin

The remark—which Moscow dismissed—marked an escalation in Mr. Biden’s verbal attacks on the Russian president, after previously calling him a butcher and war criminal. It is also the latest example of his penchant for going off script, overshadowing his intended message and prompting White House aides to clarify his words.

Administration officials and Democratic lawmakers said Sunday the off-the-cuff remark was an emotional response to the president’s interactions in Warsaw with refugees—some of whom had fled violence in Mariupol, a Ukrainian southern port city that has seen weekslong Russian bombardment and attacks on civilians.

Julianne Smith, the U.S. ambassador to North Atlantic Treaty Organization, said on CNN’s “State of the Union” that Mr. Biden’s comments were “a principled human reaction to the stories that he had heard that day.”

Others took a far more critical view of the president’s remarks. Sen.

Jim Risch

of Idaho, the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said Mr. Biden’s comments were a “horrendous gaffe” that undermined an otherwise well crafted speech.

“He gave a good speech at the end,” Mr. Risch said in an interview with CNN on Sunday. “But, my gosh, I wish they would keep him on script. I think most people who don’t deal in the lane of foreign relations don’t realize that those nine words that he uttered…would cause the kind of eruption that they did.”

“This administration has done everything they can to stop escalating. There’s not a whole lot more you can do to escalate than to call for regime change,” Mr. Risch added. “That is not the policy of the United States of America. Please, Mr. President, stay on script.”

Meanwhile, one of America’s closest allies, French President

Emmanuel Macron,

worried that Mr. Biden’s comment Saturday about Mr. Putin and calling his Russian counterpart “a butcher” could also complicate efforts to bring the war to an end through diplomacy.

“I wouldn’t use this type of wording because I continue to hold discussions with President Putin,” Mr. Macron said in an interview with France 3 TV. “We want to stop the war that Russia has launched in Ukraine without escalation—that’s the objective.”

“If we want to do that, we can’t escalate in either words or actions,” he said.

European diplomats warned too that Mr. Biden’s comments could threaten Western efforts to keep lines of communications with Moscow open. At the same time, they said, Mr. Biden’s remarks don’t endanger any current peace talks, since Russia has shown little inclination to engage seriously in such negotiations.

“No one thinks there’s the chance of a diplomatic solution in the next few days or even a few weeks,” said a senior European Union official. Mr. Putin is “going to keep on pushing and trying to overhaul” the Ukrainian government.

Top Biden administration officials haven’t heard directly from allies expressing concern about the comment since the president’s speech, according to a person familiar with the matter.

For his part, Mr. Putin has long believed the U.S. and its allies are bent on overthrowing him, U.S. officials have said, and is convinced that Washington was behind 2011 mass protests in Russian cities, the biggest of his tenure. In a speech on Friday, he accused the West of attempting to “cancel” Russia.

It wasn’t clear if Mr. Biden’s statement was designed to send a message to Mr. Putin and the international community, or simply a verbal misstep.

Earlier this year, the White House had to respond to the president’s comments when Mr. Biden suggested the response from Western allies might be more muted if Russia were to carry out a “minor incursion” into Ukrainian territory. The remarks were criticized by some as potentially playing down Russian aggression, and Ukrainian President

Volodymyr Zelensky

responded at the time that “there are no minor incursions.”

The administration also was forced to reiterate that there was no change in official policy of “strategic ambiguity” toward Taiwan when Mr. Biden said in October that the U.S. would come to the island’s aid if it was attacked by China.

In the wake of Mr. Biden’s speech Saturday in Poland, his administration has gone to great lengths to underscore that the U.S. isn’t seeking regime change in Russia despite its efforts to isolate Mr. Putin on the global stage. One person familiar with his speech said the comment in question wasn’t in the prepared remarks.

“The president’s point was that Putin cannot be allowed to exercise power over his neighbors or the region,” an official said. “He was not discussing Putin’s power in Russia, or regime change.”

Mr. Biden’s top diplomat, Secretary of State

Antony Blinken,

amplified the same point Sunday to reporters in Jerusalem.

“We do not have a strategy of regime change in Russia, or anywhere else, for that matter. In this case, as in any case, it’s up to the people of the country in question, it’s up to the Russian people,” he said.

Mr. Blinken emphasized that the Biden administration’s policy is to maintain strong support for Ukraine in the face of the war with Russia.

Mr. Biden’s political allies also came to his defense. Sen. Mark Warner, a Democrat from Virginia and Chairman of the Senate’s Intelligence Committee, said it was the Russian president who was trying to overturn a country’s leadership.

“There is one individual that’s trying to make regime change in Europe. And that’s Vladimir Putin trying to change the regime in Ukraine,” he told CNN’s “State of the Union.”

Warsaw—where Mr. Biden was speaking—has become the epicenter of Europe’s largest refugee crisis since World War II. More than 300,000 people from Ukraine have arrived in the capital since Russia’s invasion, a population that would amount to every sixth resident in the city if they stayed. Overall, more than 3.7 million people have fled Ukraine, the United Nations said, with over 2.2 million arriving in Poland.

The U.S. president also stayed across the street from the central train station that has become packed with refugees arriving from the war, with many sleeping on blankets on its floor.

The comment came at the end of Mr. Biden’s trip to Europe that was intended to demonstrate the West’s united support for Ukraine and against its invasion.

In meetings this week of NATO, the Group of Seven major economies and the European Union, Mr. Biden and other leaders together backed more military, financial and humanitarian assistance for Ukraine after Mr. Putin launched a full-scale invasion on Feb. 24.

But the unity among the Western leaders also began to show its limits, with differences emerging over how far to press their campaign of economic sanctions, particularly on targeting Russian energy exports.

Mr. Biden acknowledged in his speech Saturday that it was going to become more challenging for the U.S. and its allies to stick together as the war continued. “We must remain unified today and tomorrow and the day after and for the years and decades to come,” Mr. Biden said. “It will not be easy. There will be cost, but it’s a price we have to pay.”

Asked if the crippling sanctions the U.S. and allies have imposed on Russia could have the unintended consequence of rallying Russians around Mr. Putin, national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters on Air Force One ahead of Mr. Biden’s Saturday speech that Russians would hold their president responsible.

“The Russian people are going to ask the more fundamental question of why this happened and how this happened,” Mr. Sullivan said. “And we believe that, at the end of the day, they will be able to connect the dots.”

—Courtney McBride in Jerusalem, Warren P. Strobel in Washington and Laurence Norman in Berlin contributed to this article.

Write to Sabrina Siddiqui at Sabrina.Siddiqui@wsj.com and Tarini Parti at Tarini.Parti@wsj.com