Although some have praised Mr. Biden for stating the moral stakes in the fight so clearly, British Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi was one of several European officials who said such harsh rhetoric could backfire by pushing Mr. Putin into a corner and that the question of Russia’s leadership is better left for the Russians to work out.

“I think that’s up to the Russian people,” Mr. Zahawi told Sky News. “The Russian people, I think, are pretty fed up with what is happening in Ukraine, this illegal invasion, the destruction of their own livelihoods, their economy is collapsing around them, and I think the Russian people will decide the fate of Putin and his cronies.”

Turkey, a NATO member that has offered to mediate the fight between Kyiv and Moscow, warned that focusing on removing Mr. Putin complicates the effort to stop the war.

“If everybody burns bridges with Russia, then who is going to talk to them at the end of the day?” Ibrahim Kalin, an adviser to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, told a forum organized by the International Monetary Fund in Doha, according to The Guardian newspaper.