April 28, 2014 11:00 p.m. ET
Secretary of State John Kerry testifies before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee this month. He says more sanctions may be needed. Getty Images
Secretary of State John Kerry has been thinking about, talking through and wrestling with the Ukraine crisis for weeks, but he still grasps for words to describe the motivations of the man at its center: Russian President Vladimir Putin.
"You almost feel that he's creating his own reality, and his own sort of world, divorced from a lot of what's real on the ground for all those people, including people in his own country," Mr. Kerry said in an interview late Monday.
Mr. Kerry spoke just hours after President Barack Obama's administration announced another round of economic sanctions on Russian individuals and companies, and just hours before Europeans were to announce full details of their own new sanctions, all taken in hopes of somehow stopping Mr. Putin's intimidation of neighboring Ukraine. But the secretary didn't sound as if he thinks his work on the sanctions front is done with this latest round, the fourth so far.
Asked why the administration continues to punish individual Russians or single Russian companies rather than impose broader penalties on whole sectors of the Russian economy—the energy, financial or defense sectors, for instance—Mr. Kerry replied: "We're inches away from that now. And if they continue on this path, that's where it's heading."
He also argued strongly—and there is some evidence to support the argument—that the sanctions are biting at the top end of the Russian economic and political power structure. The best argument that the economic threat is making a difference is simple: Whatever else Mr. Putin has or hasn't done, he hasn't taken the fateful step of sending his troops across the border directly into eastern Ukraine.
But while sanctions may be pinching Kremlin cronies, the conversation with Mr. Kerry leaves no doubt that he sees Russia's actions as the product not of any collective Russian view of the world, but of the determination of an individual: Vladimir Putin.
The Ukraine crisis, Mr. Kerry said, is "obviously very personally driven in ways that I think are uniquely inappropriate to 21st century leadership." He added: "It's an amazing display of a kind of personal reaction to something that just doesn't fit into the lessons learned for the last 60 years or 70 years. It's so divorced that it leaves you feeling badly for the consequences. I think the Russian people are going to pay a price for this. It's unfortunate for the Russian people, who clearly don't fit into the costs that are being attached to this, because it appears to be so personal to President Putin."
Mr. Kerry said he finds the Russian leader's appeals to nationalism in particular "dangerous in this time and place."
And he discounted the idea that the Russia's actions are unfolding spontaneously. "There's no question that plans were executed in a thoughtful way in Crimea" when Russia annexed that Ukrainian peninsula, Mr. Kerry said. More broadly, he added: "Obviously there's a plan. And it's being carried out with a sort of singular resolve, I guess is the way to put it."
Less clear is whether the West has found any way to stop the plan from unfolding further. Aside from his strong belief that economic sanctions are the best and most promising tool for getting Russia's attention, Mr. Kerry also said the U.S. has and will provide help to the Ukrainian armed forces. But he dismissed as unrealistic those who argue providing lethal military aid quickly would produce a substantial change.
"Any sound military thinking understands that equipment of a defensive nature, that would actually make a difference, would take a significant amount of time to train up on, let along get there," he said. "Building capacity in an army the size of Ukraine's to stand up to an army with the capacity and the size of Russia's, that's not an overnight task."
Mr. Kerry also has been devoting hours of time and thousands of miles of travel to diplomatic efforts. The results, he acknowledged, are "disappointing"—a result he ascribes as "an example of bad faith and absence of legitimacy."
Nor does he sound like someone holding great hope for diplomatic fruits in the near term: "Look, that's what this building does. That's what I'm supposed to do. You're supposed to try to find a diplomatic solution to things. If you can't do that then you have to take the steps necessary to enforce your policy."
His greatest fear now? "I think it could deteriorate into hot confrontation," even without Russian troops crossing into Ukraine, Mr. Kerry said. "And there are provocateurs who are perfectly capable, who are trying to instigate that kind of flare-up."
The fact it hasn't happened so far, he said, is a tribute to the discipline and restraint of the fledgling Ukrainian government. "But obviously," he added, "you could have a flash point here."
Write to Gerald F. Seib at jerry.seib@wsj.com
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