By Labeling Putin a ‘Conflict Felony,’ Biden Personalizes the Battle

WASHINGTON — When President Biden declared to reporters on Wednesday, nearly off the cuff, that President Vladimir V. Putin was a “conflict felony,” he was talking from the center, his aides mentioned, reacting to the wrenching photographs of civilians — together with kids — being dragged, lifeless or disfigured, from ruins of buildings shelled by Russian forces.

However he was additionally personalizing the battle, in a well past presidents have prevented at moments of disaster with the USA’ main nuclear-armed adversary. And his comment underscored how private condemnation has change into coverage, as Mr. Biden and his high aides body Mr. Putin as a pariah, an indiscriminate killer who needs to be standing trial at The Hague.

Mr. Biden amplified his assaults on Thursday, calling Mr. Putin “a murderous dictator, a pure thug who’s waging an immoral conflict in opposition to the folks of Ukraine.” His secretary of state, Antony J. Blinken, chimed in, saying: “Personally, I agree. Deliberately focusing on civilians is a conflict crime.”

However what started as a visceral response seems to replicate a strategic choice. Branding Mr. Putin as a conflict felony helps the administration’s case because it concurrently tries to maintain the Western alliance unified and makes an attempt to strain China to not bail Mr. Putin out of his financial disaster and army errors. That effort will face a new test on Friday when Mr. Biden is scheduled to speak to President Xi Jinping of China for the primary time for the reason that invasion, and warn him in opposition to supplying weapons to Mr. Putin.

Mr. Biden’s feedback got here after three weeks by which the USA and its allies piled sanctions on Russia that the administration mentioned had been meant to drive Mr. Putin to withdraw his forces from Ukraine. However diplomats and intelligence officers from a number of nations say these sanctions are seen by Mr. Putin as an effort to stoke Russian unrest, turning each rich oligarchs and peculiar Russians in opposition to his rule.

The White Home says that “regime change” in Russia isn’t on Washington’s strategic agenda. However in previous instances when presidents have known as nationwide leaders conflict criminals — Saddam Hussein in Iraq or Bashar al-Assad of Syria — it has continuously been linked to an effort, covert or overt, to drive them from workplace.

When promised anonymity, many American officers mentioned that they can’t think about that Ukraine may very well be protected from Russian army motion whereas Mr. Putin, stewing in grievances and now indignant at his personal army’s efficiency, remains to be in workplace.

Final week, William J. Burns, the C.I.A. director and a former U.S. ambassador to Moscow who knew Mr. Putin as he tightened his management over Russia, informed the Home Intelligence Committee that Mr. Putin’s strikes had been “premeditated and savage.” He predicted that Putin was “more likely to double down and attempt to grind down the Ukrainian army with no regard for civilian casualties.”

“He has no sustainable political endgame within the face of what’s going to proceed to be fierce resistance from Ukrainians,” Mr. Burns mentioned.

Different American intelligence officers have mentioned that Mr. Putin views the battle not solely as a conflict to reclaim Ukraine, however to push again on American energy. They mentioned he more and more sees himself wrapped in a wrestle with Mr. Biden, whom he views because the final of a generation of Washington Cold Warriors.

Mr. Biden and Mr. Putin haven’t talked since Feb. 12, when the American president made one final try and warn the Russian chief that an assault would result in crushing sanctions, extra arms to the Ukrainians and a significant buildup of troops and arms on NATO’s jap entrance. That buildup was precisely the consequence Mr. Putin was making an attempt to forestall.

It’s nearly unimaginable that the 2 males can be coping with one another instantly anytime quickly. Hours after Mr. Biden’s “conflict felony” feedback, the Kremlin spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, known as the characterization “unacceptable and unforgivable rhetoric.”

Mr. Putin has not mentioned a lot about Mr. Biden, however he vowed this week to cleanse Russia of “scum and traitors” who he mentioned had been being organized by the West as a “fifth column” to destroy the nation.

The enmity between the 2 males has been barely disguised for years, for the reason that day when Mr. Biden, as vp, by his account, informed Mr. Putin that he had regarded in his eyes and seen no soul. “We perceive each other,” Mr. Putin is alleged to have replied.

But it surely comes at a second when Washington’s greatest concern is that Mr. Putin will escalate the conflict — and attain for weapons of mass destruction.

Simply hours earlier than Mr. Biden’s declaration, his nationwide safety adviser, Jake Sullivan, informed Nikolai P. Patrushev, Mr. Putin’s primary nationwide safety adviser, that “any doable Russian choice to make use of chemical or organic weapons in Ukraine” would lead to a good harsher Western response. A number of of Mr. Biden’s aides have been involved that if the Russian chief feels cornered or believes the USA is making an attempt to foment opposition, the probabilities that he’ll attain for such weapons may very well be heightened.

So the controversy underway in Washington now could be what, precisely, may set off Mr. Putin. Some consider he might lash out if dissent in Russia, already seen in road demonstrations, poses an actual risk. Others consider that his set off level could be a extra direct entry into the conflict by NATO nations. They’re already offering antitank and antiaircraft weapons which have contributed to what the Pentagon now estimates is a Russian demise toll of a minimum of 7,000 troops.

One former intelligence official famous that it was Hillary Clinton’s help for anti-Putin road demonstrations in Russia that prompted him to order the hacking of the Democratic Nationwide Committee when Mrs. Clinton was working for president in 2016. Mr. Putin is a believer, the official mentioned, in retribution.

Mr. Putin would have good motive to suppose the Biden administration is wanting ahead to his exit, although American officers select their phrases rigorously to keep away from the implication that Washington’s coverage is to hurry the method. Mr. Blinken, chatting with reporters on Thursday, mentioned that “when all is alleged and completed, an impartial Ukraine can be there, and sooner or later Vladimir Putin won’t.”

The final time an American president went head-to-head with a Russian or Soviet chief with a lot at stake was 60 years in the past, through the Cuban missile disaster, broadly thought to be the closest the world got here to Armageddon. And but at that second, in October 1962, President John F. Kennedy’s intuition was to keep away from personalizing the battle — and to assist his Soviet counterpart, Nikita S. Khrushchev, discover a manner out of direct confrontation.

“I feel it’s the most pure comparability to this second,” mentioned Fredrik Logevall, a Harvard historian and Kennedy biographer.

“He saved warning the members of ExComm,” the committee Kennedy established to information by way of the 13 days of the disaster, “that they needed to see issues from Khrushchev’s perspective,” he mentioned. “He mentioned we needed to give him one thing right here to step away. And he was cautious in his public feedback to not personalize his criticisms of Khrushchev himself. It’s a direct distinction to what Biden did.”

Mr. Putin isn’t the primary international adversary Mr. Biden has known as a conflict felony, as he himself recounted in “Guarantees to Preserve,” a 2007 memoir. He recalled assembly Slobodan Milosevic, the president of Serbia after which of Yugoslavia, who in the end grew to become the primary sitting head of a authorities to be charged with conflict crimes.

“He might inform I had nearly had it together with his lies, and at one level he regarded up from the maps and mentioned, with none emotion, ‘What do you consider me?’” Mr. Biden wrote.

“‘I feel you’re a rattling conflict felony and you ought to be tried as one,’” Mr. Biden wrote. “I used to be wanting proper in Milosevic’s eyes, and his expression didn’t change. There was not the slightest twitch in his face. It was like I’d simply informed him he was an exquisite man.”

Mr. Blinken mentioned the president was now keen to go additional with Mr. Putin, and start amassing proof of conflict crimes. “So after I inform you that there can be accountability and penalties for any conflict crimes which were dedicated,” Mr. Blinken mentioned on Thursday, “I hope you’ll take me at my phrase, however actions all the time converse louder than phrases.”