THE SQUIZ
US President Joe Biden has ended a 3-day diplomatic trip to Europe with a big speech outside the centuries-old Royal Castle in Warsaw, Poland. He described Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as the “test of all time” in the battle between “liberty and repression, between a rules-based order and one governed by brute force.” And of Russian President Vladimir Putin, Biden said “for God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power”. And didn’t that set a hare running…

WHY’S THAT?
It’s unusual for a US president to call for another country’s leader to go, especially when it involves a nuclear-armed country the size of Russia. His team gave some clarification for the unscripted comment yesterday. “The President’s point was that Putin cannot be allowed to exercise power over his neighbours or the region. He was not discussing Putin’s power in Russia or regime change,” a White House official said. Moscow reacted, saying it’s “not for Biden to decide. The President of Russia is elected by Russians.” Some Russia-watchers say Biden’s line feeds into a narrative Putin is propagating with his people – that the West thinks it knows best and is trying to destroy their country. And experts are debating whether the comment will have implications for the war on Ukraine and beyond. One called it a “bad lapse in discipline” while another said “I think just what President Biden was saying is, how can such a terrible person be ruling Russia?” 

AND WHAT’S THE LATEST WITH THE WAR?
Russian military bigwig Sergei Rudskoy said that “the first stage” of the operation had been carried out, allowing them to “concentrate our main efforts on achieving the main goal: the liberation of Donbas“. On Saturday, Russian military bigwig Sergei Rudskoy said that “the first stage” of the operation had been carried out, allowing them to “concentrate our main efforts on achieving the main goal: the liberation of Donbas“. To explain why that’s a thing: one of the reasons Moscow gave for invading Ukraine was to stop the “systematic extermination of the Donbas population” in the Luhansk and Donetsk regions in Ukraine’s east. Reports say 93% of Luhansk is now under the control of the Russia-backed rebels, as is 54% of Donetsk. But yesterday, the city of Lviv come under heavy rocket fire – and it’s in western Ukraine… It means that Russia’s end game remains unclear. The next round of talks between Ukraine and Russian officials will start in Turkey later today.