It’s arguably not the right moment to focus on Joe Biden’s verbal slips, but it is a little unnerving when the leader of the free world says ‘Iranians’ — or possibly ‘Uranians’ — when he means to say ‘Ukrainians’. These are dangerous times and we need politicians to speak clearly.

Still, Biden got in his point across in his State of the Union address. He announced that he was closing US air space to Russian aircraft. He led a standing ovation for the Ukrainian ambassador to the US, Oksana Markarova.

He said that Putin is ‘now more isolated from the world than he has ever been’.

The president also said: ‘In the battle between democracy and autocracy, democracies are rising to the moment, and the world is clearly choosing the side of peace and security.’

As my colleague Matt Purple has noted, Biden came over all George W. Bush-era when he called Putin a ‘dictator’. It’s good guys vs bad guys again in the ‘battle of democracies and autocracies.’ He ended by raising his fist and saying, ‘Go get him!’ Or ‘Go get em!’ It is hard to tell which.

For now, it seems true to say that Putin’s invasion has given the Biden administration the political mood-change it so desperately needs. His approval rating may still be very low but he might expect some support for his speech, given the widespread horror at Russia’s actions in Ukraine.

With more difficulty, Biden tried to apply a renewed sense of geopolitical unity over Ukraine to the rest of his agenda. He said he wanted to fund, not defund, the police, even though a lot of his fellow Democrats have said the opposite. He touted his successes over Covid and tried to spell out how his Build Back Better plan had improved the economy.

As Biden spoke, Russian forces were still carrying out heavy assaults on Ukraine, having bombarded the central square of the country’s second-biggest city, Kharkiv, and continued their attack on Mariupol in the south east.

I’m currently in Lviv, in Ukraine, near the Polish border. It’s early morning here and the Lvivians haven’t had much of a chance to digest the President’s message.

I text Olesia, a mother of three, who kindly volunteered to show us around. She replies in the formal yet frank Ukrainian style:

‘now we are witnessing unprecedented reaction: invincibility of the Ukrainian people backed up with an avalanche of global support. This Biden speech is one of numerous outstanding examples. I was struck by the support voiced by your Royal Family, who usually do not comment on political affairs.

‘Russian troops are often referred as orcs or barbarians. Common sense, diplomacy, negotiations, etiquette – is not their language. The only response they are capable of understanding is brutal force in conjunction with advice to go and f*ck themselves.’

‘Bureaucratic concerns must be kept aside — only vivid actions matter’.