The Kremlin said on Monday 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.
"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."
"We will continue to track the statements of the US president in the most attentive way," Peskov told reporters, according to Reuters.
Putin has not commented publicly on Biden's remark.
In his first live appearance since the remark, Putin was shown on state television on Monday being briefed by Alexander Sergeev, president of the Russian Academy of Sciences, on the accumulation of carbon in molluscs and the use of artifical intelligence to decipher ancient Tibetan manuscripts.
