evidence: On 26 March, President Biden, speaking in Warsaw, said, unscripted: "For God’s sake, this man [Putin] cannot remain in power." Such an overt statement of intention for regime change in Russia has not gone down well in most of Europe. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken later clarified Biden’s Warsaw remark: "As you know, and as you have heard us say repeatedly, we do not have a strategy of regime change in Russia, or anywhere else, for that matter". Blinken has apparently forgotten Vietnam, Chile, Iraq, Afghanistan, and quite a few more. [...] He explained that without Ukraine being integrated into or closely allied to Russia, Russia was a "predominantly Asian imperial state". Whereas Ukraine integrated into Russia gave Russia the opening to be (or resume being) "a Eurasian empire". So the long-held US aim has been to push Ukraine away from Russia, as a major step towards constraining Russian strategy, and more distantly Chinese strategy too, thereby sustaining US primacy.