Biden spoke to CNN’s Jake Tapper on Tuesday, and the host asked him if Putin had an offramp from the conflict that began on February 24, in what Russia dubbed a “special military operation.”

The U.S. and its Western allies have imposed harsh sanctions on Russia and provided Ukraine with support including military equipment as the country battles Putin’s forces.

Tapper asked Biden if there was a way for Putin to leave Ukraine without seizing territory in a way that would be acceptable in the Russian president’s mind.

“I don’t know what’s in his mind. Clearly, he could leave. He could just flat leave, and still probably hold his position together in Russia,” Biden told Tapper.

The president said that Putin might be able to convince the Russian people “that this something that he thought made sense, but now he’s accomplished what he wanted to do, and it’s time to bring Russians home.”

Biden also said he wouldn’t meet with Putin at the upcoming G20 summit, except to discuss the release of imprisoned WNBA star Brittney Griner, 31, who is held in Russia.

Newsweek has asked the White House and the Russian foreign ministry for comment.

Russian military reversals in Ukraine have raised questions about whether Putin can stay in power without winning some kind of victory.

Moscow is not fully in control of four regions that it has officially annexed - Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson - while a partial mobilization of Russian forces has been rife with problems.

President Biden caused controversy in March when he said in Poland that Putin “cannot remain in power,” and called the Russian president a “butcher.”

The administration later said that Biden was not calling for regime change in Russia, which would have represented a significant shift in U.S. policy.

Julianne Smith, the U.S. permanent representative to NATO, told CNN in March: “In the moment, I think that was a principled human reaction to the stories that he had heard that day.”

Biden had been speaking to Ukrainian refugees in Warsaw about their experiences.

“The U.S. does not have a policy of regime change in Russia. Full stop,” Smith said, while Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters in Jerusalem on March 27 that the leadership of Russia was “up to the Russian people.”

Polling from the non-government Levada Analytical Center in Moscow found Putin had an approval rating of 77 percent in September, though the quality of such results in Russia has been called into question.