US President Joe Biden compares Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to China’s crushing of protests in Tiananmen Square in 1989, speaking during a visit to Poland near the border with Ukraine.
Biden also refers to Russian President Vladimir Putin as “a man who, quite frankly, I think is a war criminal,” adding: “And I think we’ll meet the legal definition of that as well.”
Biden spoke at meetings with US soldiers stationed in Poland close to the border and with aid workers helping to deal with the massive refugee crisis caused by the conflict in Ukraine.
The US president says he would have liked to see the devastation caused by the conflict “first hand.”
“They won’t let me, understandably I guess, cross the border,” he says.
Biden praises Ukrainians for showing “backbone” in their resistance against Russia, giving the example of “a 30-year-old woman standing there in front of a tank with a rifle.”
“I mean, talk about what happened to Tiananmen Square. This is Tiananmen Square squared,” he says.
Speaking to the troops, he says: “You’re in the midst of a fight between democracies and autocrats. What you’re doing is consequential, really consequential.”
Biden landed earlier on Friday in the city of Rzeszow in southeastern Poland — around 80 kilometers (50 miles) in a straight line from the border with Ukraine.
