Thursday, August 28, 2014

2:44 PM

By Unknown

In: , , ,

No comments

Obama Vows Russia Penalties, but Avoids Calling Ukraine Advance an Invasion - New York Times

HTTP/1.1 302 Found Date: Thu, 28 Aug 2014 21:19:48 GMT Server: Apache Set-Cookie: NYT-S=deleted; expires=Thu, 01-Jan-1970 00:00:01 GMT; path=/; domain=www.stg.nytimes.com Set-Cookie: NYT-S=0MrbR7PgLIdPLDXrmvxADeHLKcVUP1.Ob3deFz9JchiAIUFL2BEX5FWcV.Ynx4rkFI; expires=Sat, 27-Sep-2014 21:19:48 GMT; path=/; domain=.nytimes.com Location: http://ift.tt/1liPguc Content-Length: 0 nnCoection: close Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8 HTTP/1.1 200 OK Server: Apache Cache-Control: no-cache Channels: NytNow Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8 Transfer-Encoding: chunked Date: Thu, 28 Aug 2014 21:19:48 GMT X-Varnish: 1519840719 1519837999 Age: 43 Via: 1.1 varnish X-Cache: HIT X-API-Version: 5-5 X-PageType: article Connection: close 0022f0






World |Obama Vows Russia Penalties, but Avoids Calling Ukraine Advance an Invasion



http://nyti.ms/1pn1uTY






World |​​NYT Now





President Obama made a statement from the White House ahead of a meeting with his national security council in Washington on Thursday. Gabriella Demczuk/The New York Times




WASHINGTON — President Obama condemned the latest Russian military advance into Ukraine on Thursday and said the United States and its allies would take further actions to punish Moscow for violating its neighbor’s sovereignty, but he stopped short of calling it an invasion.


“My expectation is we will take additional steps primarily because we have not seen any meaningful action on the part of Russia to try to resolve this in a diplomatic fashion,” he told reporters in a news conference at the White House. “The sanctions that we’ve already applied have been effective. Our intelligence shows the Russians know they’ve been effective.”



Related Coverage




  • A member of a pro-Russian separatist militia walked by an unexploded rocket that fell in the backyard of a house on Thursday in Troitsko-Khartsyzsk, Ukraine.

    Ukraine Asserts Russian Invasion and Reinstitutes DraftAUG. 28, 2014





  • Ukraine Crisis in MapsFEB. 27, 2014




  • Residents looked on as Novoazovsk, Ukraine, was shelled in the distance Wednesday.

    Ukraine Reports Russian Invasion on a New FrontAUG. 27, 2014




Grappling with multiple international crises, Mr. Obama also confirmed that he had asked Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel for options for American military strikes inside Syria targeting forces of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, which has established a virtual state across the border of those two countries. But he cautioned against expecting imminent action, saying he wanted to build a formidable international coalition first.


The president said he wanted to build a formidable international coalition before taking any action, and he made it clear that he was not close to settling on an approach.


“We don’t have a strategy yet,” he said, before heading into a meeting with his national security advisers to discuss the situation there. “Folks are getting a little further ahead of where we’re at.”


The president’s comments came at a time of heightened international tension that has consumed much of his time and attention, but the underlying message he seemed intent on sending was to urge caution in tackling them. He argued that there was no military solution to the crisis with ISIS or the confrontation with Russia.


He used the occasion to chastise regional allies in the Middle East for playing both sides when it comes to extremist groups like ISIS, and he said he was sending Secretary of State John Kerry to the region to assemble a consensus approach for rolling back the organization’s gains. He also said that he had just spoken with Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany about Russia and had invited Ukraine’s new president, Petro O. Poroshenko, to visit him in Washington.


Mr. Obama declined to call the latest reports of Russian military units moving into Ukraine an invasion, as others have, saying they are “not really a shift” but “a little more overt” version of longstanding violations of Ukrainian sovereignty. “I consider the actions that we’ve seen in the last week a continuation of what’s been taking place for months now,” he said. “These separatists are backed, trained, armed, financed by Russia. Throughout this process we’ve seen deep Russian involvement in everything that they’ve done.”


Mr. Obama’s tone was strikingly more restrained than that of his ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, who earlier in the day bluntly accused Russia of lying about its military intervention in Ukraine. In a blistering statement to the Security Council, Ms. Power said “the mask is coming off” Russia’s actions, which she called “a threat to all of our peace and security.”


The Russian escalation came even as Mr. Obama prepared to travel to Europe next week to meet with NATO allies and reassure the Baltic States that the United States would stand by them in case of aggression from Moscow. While Mr. Obama has been reluctant to send substantial American forces to NATO allies in Eastern Europe, NATO now plans to create a “spearhead” rapid deployment force and a “more visible” presence in the region.


But Mr. Obama ruled out the prospect of direct involvement in Ukraine. “We are not taking military action to solve the Ukrainian problem,” he said. “What we’re doing is to mobilize the international community to apply pressure on them. I think it is very important to recognize that a military solution to this problem is not going to be forthcoming.”


He likewise stressed the need for a political approach to ISIS on top of any military action. As American warplanes continued to strike ISIS targets inside Iraq, he acknowledged that the group had carved out “a safe haven” in Syria. Nonetheless, any decision to extend military action into Syria must be “part of a broader comprehensive strategy,” he said.


“My priority at this point is to make sure that the gains that ISIL made in Iraq are rolled back and that Iraq has the opportunity to govern itself effectively and secure itself,” he said, using an alternative term for ISIS.


“Clearly ISIL has come to represent the very worst elements in the region that we have to deal with collectively,” he added. “That’s going to be a long-term project. It’s going to require us to stabilize Syria in some fashion.”


He rejected the notion raised by many political leaders and analysts that strikes inside Syria would have the effect of helping President Bashar al-Assad in his brutal and long-running civil war against ISIS and other Syrian rebel groups.


“I don’t think this is a situation where we have to choose,” Mr. Obama said. “We have to give people inside Syria a choice other than ISIL or Assad. I don’t see any scenario in which Assad is able to bring peace and stability” to his country.


The president said he is consulting with Congress about possible action in Syria but added that it was premature to discuss the possible legal justification of any strikes there since he does not know yet what he plans to do. “I don’t want to put the cart before the horse,” he said.


While the president voiced caution, it fell to Ms. Power to lay out the American case against Russia. During her speech at the Security Council, she said satellite imagery on Tuesday showed Russian combat units southeast of the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk and noted that Ukrainian forces detained regular Russian army personnel in Luhansk on the same day.


She mocked the Russian explanation that those soldiers wandered into Ukraine by mistake and added that Russia fired rockets from its territory at Ukrainian positions in Novoazovsk and then attacked with two columns of armored vehicles and tanks.


Ms. Power added that Russian armored vehicles and rocket launchers were on the outskirts of that town and that Russia’s deployment on its own side of the border was the largest it has been since May and includes combat aircraft and helicopter. She said unmanned aircraft routinely cross into Ukrainian airspace from Russia and that Russia has sent artillery and air defense systems into Ukraine that are not in the Ukrainian inventory.



Site Index











Source: Top Stories - Google News - http://ift.tt/1mZnyOR

0 comments:

Post a Comment