The Kremlin called it 'alarming' that President Joe Biden said Russia President Vladimir Putin 'cannot remain in power' in what is widely viewed as a measured response from Moscow.
The White House has been backtracking Biden's Saturday comments in Warsaw, Poland calling for Putin's ouster due to concerns it could escalate tensions with Russia and lead to potential conflict.
In response to Biden's comment, which received little coverage on Russian state television, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters: 'This is a statement that is certainly alarming.'
'We will continue to track the statements of the U.S. president in the most attentive way,' Peskov added.
Earlier Kremlin attack dogs went onto Russian state TV to demand Biden undergo a 'medical examination', similar to some GOP lawmakers' rhetoric in addressing the president's frequent gaffes and slip ups.
Putin has not yet commented publicly on Biden's public call for an end to his 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.
During his remarks, the president cast Russia's invasion of Ukraine, which commenced February 24, 2022, as a battle in a broader conflict between democracy and autocracy.
Russia initially hit back at Biden's jibe calling Putin a 'butcher' by branding the U.S. leader 'weak, sick and deluded'.
Moscow spokesmen claimed to state media that Biden is incapable of 'soberly' assessing reality.
Putin's own spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: 'We don't know what President Biden meant, we know what he said. And what he said in general in his speech suggests that he is a victim of numerous delusions.'
Kremlin attack dogs have issued a more-measured-than-usual response to President Joe Biden calling for Russian President Vladimir Putin's ouster, claiming his remarks were 'alarming'
Russia's attack on Ukraine has entered it's second month after initially invading on February 24, 2022. Pictured: A man walks on Monday, March 28 in a residential area destroyed by a Russian rocket strike in Kyiv, Ukraine
Speaker of the Russian parliament Vyacheslav Volodin branded Biden a 'weak and sick man', guilty of 'hysteria' by branding Putin a 'butcher' for the bloodshed in Ukraine.
He said the U.S. president's behavior might be 'professionally explained by psychiatrists' but 'from a male point of view, the weak behave this way.'
'US citizens should be ashamed of their president,' he continued. 'Perhaps, he is sick. It would be right for Biden to undergo a medical examination.'
The White House tried to clarify Biden's remarks and on Sunday he said 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.
The President was asked by reporters if he 'wants Putin removed' as he left church in Washington D.C.
He yelled 'No!' before getting into his motorcade.
In his first live appearance since Biden's remark, Putin was shown on state television Monday being briefed by Alexander Sergeev, president of the Russian Academy of Sciences, on the accumulation of carbon in molluscs and the use of AI to decipher ancient Tibetan manuscripts.
Labour Party Leader Keir Starmer called Biden's jab at Putin 'unhelpful'.
Meanwhile, Cabinet minister Nadhim Zahawi was more guarded, insisting that the United Kingdom is in 'lockstep' with America but it is for the Russian people to decide who runs their country.
Downing Street endorsed Zahawi's response and denied there were any concerns about Biden's competence.
Millions of people have fled the violence in Ukraine in the last month. Here a woman arrives with her four children at a train station in Przemysl, Poland on Monday, March 28, 2022
Putin has been Russia's paramount leader since Boris Yeltsin resigned in 1999. Dmitry Medvedev served as president from 2008 to 2012 while Putin was prime minister before returning to the Kremlin.
Under constitutional changes approved in 2020, Putin could seek election for two more 6-year terms as president, allowing him to stay in power until 2036.
The Kremlin says Putin is a democratically elected leader and that it is for the Russian people, not Washington, to decide who leads their country.
But such a blunt remark from Biden appeared to have breached the norms of U.S.-Russian and even U.S.-Soviet relations. No U.S. leader has publicly called for the departure of any Kremlin chief for decades.
The remark looks likely to further fuel concerns among Putin's closest circle that Washington wants him ousted and to impose its own views on Russia and the world.
Medvedev, now deputy secretary of Russia's Security Council, said on March 23 the world could spiral towards a nuclear dystopia if Washington pressed on with what the Kremlin casts as a long-term plot to destroy Russia.
Medvedev painted a grim picture of a post-Putin Russia, saying it could lead to an unstable leadership in Moscow 'with a maximum number of nuclear weapons aimed at targets in the United States and Europe'.
Security Council chief Nikolai Patrushev, previously head of the powerful Federal Security Service spy agency, has said Washington is bent on stoking a 'color revolution' in Russia like those in Georgia, Ukraine and other post-Soviet states.
Top U.S. diplomats on Sunday played down Biden's remark, and Biden, asked by a reporter as he departed a church service in Washington if he was calling for regime change in Russia, gave a one-word reply: 'No.'
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told a news conference in Jerusalem that Biden was making the point that Putin couldn't be empowered to wage war, adding that decisions on Russia's future leadership were 'up to the Russian people'.
Putin says Russia's 'special military operation' in Ukraine was necessary because the United States was using the country to threaten Russia and Moscow had to take action to stop what it calls Kyiv's persecution of Russian speakers.
Ukraine has dismissed the claim of persecution as a baseless pretext for invading
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