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Warsaw, Poland (CNN)At almost the same time President Joe Biden labeled him a "butcher," Vladimir Putin's missiles started dropping in Lviv, Ukraine.

Sending black smoke and flames billowing into the air, and injuring at least five people, the strikes on a fuel depot pierced what had been relative calm in the western hub city that had seen relatively little of the war that has engulfed the nation.

The aim hardly seemed coincidence. Biden was 250 miles away, meeting Ukrainian refugees in harsh weather at Poland's national stadium. He heard appeals from young moms to pray for the men — husbands, dads, brothers — they had left behind.

"We Ukrainian moms are ready to strangle (Putin) with our own hands," claimed a lady whose son stayed to fight. Gathering up a tiny child wearing a pink coat and pigtails, Biden told her he wanted to take her home.

When he returned to his hotel, advisers informed Biden about the attacks in Lviv. A few hours later, fueled by pain and rage, Biden strode into the courtyard of an ancient Polish castle to proclaim the Russian President "cannot continue in office."

The very last comments Biden would speak on his last-minute trip to Europe ended up being the most impactful, resonating globally as Air Force One left for Washington. They startled his aides,

many of whom spent hours perfecting the language of a speech considered by the White House as a critical occasion for Biden's administration. The sentence Biden stated wasn't in what they wrote.

Gathered backstage at the castle, White House officials immediately released a correction — one of three on this trip alone — to claim Biden wasn't asking for regime change. But not before the Kremlin released its own affronted reaction, stating Russia's ruler is "not to be selected by Mr. Biden."

The chain of events that happened here Saturday afternoon brought into sharp focus the profoundly uneasy mood that surrounds Europe as Russia's invasion of Ukraine approaches its second month. A demonstration of aggressiveness from Putin in the borders of Ukraine was followed by an offhand though firmly conveyed recommendation from Biden that Russians choose another leader.

"He went to the National Stadium in Warsaw and physically interacted with hundreds of Ukrainians. He heard their brave tales while they were leaving Ukraine in the aftermath of Russia's terrible conflict in Ukraine. In the moment, I believe it was a principled human response to the tales that he had heard that day," Biden's ambassador to NATO, Julianne Smith, said Sunday on CNN's "State of the Union."

Biden's image of Putin has been getting progressively dark over the last month, according to sources, and his terminology has intensified in calling a "pure thug," "murderous tyrant," "war criminal" and, after meeting refugees at the stadium, a "butcher."

His advisers have indicated Biden has been attempting to avoid the Cold War, Washington vs Moscow dynamic he thinks Putin craves. Instead, he left Europe more directly at conflict with the Russian leader than ever.

Whether it was his purpose seems unclear. The correction the White House provided was at least the third time on Biden's tour a White House official felt forced to clean up statements the President made that seemed, on their own, shocking.

As he was celebrating the valor of the Ukrainians, Biden warned US soldiers "you're going to see when you're there" — even though he's pledged American forces won't be joining the battle directly. Afterward, a spokeswoman stated nothing had changed: "The President has been clear we are not deploying US soldiers to Ukraine."

And when Biden warned he would react "in kind" to the deployment of chemical weapons by Russia in Ukraine, national security advisor Jake Sullivan told reporters the United States had "no intention of employing chemical weapons period, under any situation."

Biden has a well-established record of speaking out of hand, but maybe never with stakes so high. White House sources said before Biden's address the President had been working closely behind the scenes to build collaboration among his colleagues.

"He sleeps way less on these kinds of trips than maybe other trips because he's just going, going, going — like, wants to talk to the next leader; you know, take the next briefing," Sullivan said Friday midway through Biden's flight from Brussels to Rzeszów in southeastern Poland, where he was meeting with American soldiers.

Biden goes back to Washington with some triumphs to highlight at home

Coming precisely a month after Russia invaded Ukraine, Biden's surprise visit to Europe was designed as a display of American strength as the region faced its bloodiest crisis since World War II. Aides said after months of telephone talks and video conferences from his basement Situation Room in Washington, Biden wanted to travel here to meet leaders face-to-face at a key stage in the conflict.

The scheduling of the meetings was sudden, leaving some European officials unsure anything could reasonably result from negotiations without the normal time to prepare. Some Western diplomats felt Biden's insistence on an in-person summit was an effort to push choices on some of the major sticking issues.

Others concerned that instead of cementing solidarity among the allies — which officials say has come as a shock to Putin — the visit will instead highlight the fissures that still do exist.

Still, they got to work interacting with their US counterparts to organize the so-called "deliverables" — those items leaders may declare later to demonstrate their respective constituencies they are able to get things done.

Even while Biden was going to Europe on Wednesday, the conversations persisted. Aboard Air Force One, the President's numerous policy specialists flooded in and out of his cabin in the nose of the jet, briefing him on progress toward the multiple objectives he was expecting to achieve.

Biden's senior national security assistant characterized the setting like "speed dating with the President on every issue under the sun" — although with stakes greater than possibly any other occasion in recent memory.

As it turns out, Biden's journey to Brussels did bring successes, notably the formation of a joint task force with Europe to wean it from its dependency on Russian oil and gas. Yet later, even Biden conceded the remarkable last-minute meeting was unlikely to convince Russia to reduce its carnage in Ukraine, at least in the immediate future.

"The answer is no," Biden answered when asked directly if anything that transpired in Brussels would compel Putin to reverse direction. Instead, he said "the single-most crucial thing is for us to remain cohesive" for months to come, which he predicted will gradually diminish Putin's capacity and desire to continue on.

"We have to show — the reason I requested for the meeting — we have to remain completely, totally, absolutely unified," he stated.

President steels the West for a long struggle

It was the clearest hint yet that 30 days into Russia's war, Biden and his staff do not feel the horrific battle in Ukraine is approaching a conclusion.

"This struggle will not be won in days or months," Biden stated during his statement on Saturday afternoon. "We need to brace ourselves for a hard struggle ahead."

Even Russia's assertion Saturday to be reducing its military aims was privately received with skepticism from American officials, who said they'd look instead to what Putin did with his soldiers in the nation before making a judgement.

One of Biden's purposes in visiting Europe was to infuse a human dimension into his decision-making by meeting with refugees and those aiding them, along with American troops he'd put near NATO's eastern boundary to serve as a deterrence to Putin.

Biden said he had hoped to see more, yearning to visit Ukraine itself to bear witness to its suffering. As a senator and vice president, Biden was a frequent traveler to American conflict zones, a point he emphasized while addressing soldiers positioned around 60 miles from the border with Ukraine.

"I've been in and out of Iraq and Afghanistan around 40 times," he remembered.

Yet sneaking across the border into Ukraine was never really contemplated by Biden's advisors. Unlike a stay in Iraq or Afghanistan, where US bases and people may assist control the skies, Ukraine is not an American battle zone — a reality that hung over Biden's trip in ways both practical and conceptual as he attempted to define the next phase of the struggle.

For Ukrainians watching from their city of Kyiv, this week's conferences were disappointingly unsatisfactory. NATO leaders remain roundly opposed to proposals for a no-fly-zone from President Volodymyr Zelensky, who didn't even bother asking again during virtual comments to the NATO summit on Wednesday. Instead, he just noted out he'd never gotten a clear response to his request.

"We are quite dissatisfied, in all honesty. We expect greater boldness. Expected some big moves. The coalition has made choices as if there's no conflict," stated Andriy Yermak, chief of the Office of the President of Ukraine, in a live interview with the Atlantic Council on Friday.

Even Biden's commitment Wednesday to react proportionately should Putin employ chemical weapons in Ukraine was greeted as cold comfort by some Ukrainian leaders.

"What we heard is that it is OK for us to die of gunshots, OK for us to die of missiles, OK for my people to suffer of famine in the seized towns. But if and when chemical weapons would be employed, then there will be a shift. You can understand this was incredibly unpleasant, that this was extremely bothersome," said Kira Rudik, a Ukrainian member of Parliament, interviewed by CNN's Hala Gorani.

"If the entire world is so terrified of Putin, why is Biden saying we'll alter our mind if there's a chemical attack? Do you comprehend how nasty this sounds?" Rudik asked.

Others in the area — at least those protected by NATO's collective defense pact — felt more confident.

"We know what Russian imperialism stands for, and we know what it means to be assaulted by Russian military forces, because our grandfathers and great-grandfathers suffered that; occasionally even our parents experienced that," Polish President Andrzej Duda told Biden as they met Friday.

"So, thank you for your attendance," he remarked. "And thank you, first and foremost, for your amazing leadership."

This article has been updated with more reaction.