WARSAW, MAR 26: The U.S. has a “sacred commitment” to the NATO military alliance’s collective defence, US President Joe Biden told his Polish counterpart, Andrzej Duda, on Saturday during a visit to Warsaw.

“You can count on that… For your freedom and ours,” he told Duda, who said that Poles were feeling a “great sense of threat” as a result of the conflict in neighbouring Ukraine.

Biden also said he thought Russian President Vladimir Putin “was counting on dividing, be able to separate eastern flank from the West.” However, he said, he had not been able to do so.

Biden further thanked Poland for taking in refugees from Ukraine. “We do acknowledge that Poland is taking on a significant responsibility that I don’t think should just be Poland,” he said.

Biden, meeting with refugees in Warsaw, called his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin a “butcher“.

Asked what he thought of Putin after meeting refugees, Biden said: “He’s abutcher.”

He added that that he was not sure that Russia had changed its strategy in its invasion of Ukraine, after Moscow said its focus was now to completely “liberate” the breakaway eastern Donbass region.

“I am not sure they have,” Biden said when asked by a reporter if Russia had changed its strategy.