"The one thing that we should not want is, we should not want regime change in Russia... regime change is a bad policy," Smith said on Monday.
The United States knows Russia is a country, has its own borders, and its own territory, which it values highly, Smith added.
"Russia is Russia. Their territorial integrity is every little bit as important as anybody else’s territorial integrity," he said. "We need to make it clear we are not going to ever threaten that."
In April, US Vice President Kamala Harris insisted that the US is "not into a regime change" a week after US President Joe Biden said that Russian President Vladimir Putin should no longer stay in power due to the military operation in Ukraine.
In his remarks in Warsaw in late March, Biden said the Russian president "cannot remain in power." The claims sparked criticism both in the US and abroad, with Biden later clarifying that Washington was not pursuing a regime change policy in Russia. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken then said that the US does not work toward regime change in Russia, or anywhere else.
The Russian authorities have also reacted to Biden's statements, saying that it is for the Russian citizens to decide who will govern the country and that such claims by the US raise profound concerns.