“I’ll look you within the eye and inform you, as President Biden appeared President Putin within the eye and advised him right now, that issues we didn’t do in 2014, we’re ready to do now,” Mr. Sullivan mentioned, referring to the 12 months Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula. Nearly no nation has acknowledged the motion, and Western powers proceed to levy sanctions in opposition to Russia for it. However the sanctions have failed of their main goal: to create sufficient ache for Russia that it returns the territory.
In current days, American officers have mentioned {that a} checklist of potential penalties being compiled by the Treasury Division, in collaboration with European allies, ranges from blocking Russian corporations from entry to international capital markets to monetary penalties aimed on the Russian elite, particularly the oligarchs who’ve helped finance and help Mr. Putin.
Probably the most excessive step — one that’s nonetheless being debated — could be to chop Russia off from the worldwide monetary settlement system, referred to as SWIFT, however some European officers have feared that step would possibly provoke too harsh a response.
Mr. Sullivan additionally held out the opportunity of “another pathway by which we will make progress on diplomacy,’’ describing what could be, in essence, a return to a diplomatic course of Russia engaged in six years in the past — however has largely ignored since.
Russian officers mentioned the tone of the decision was “trustworthy and businesslike.” However Mr. Putin’s key message, the Kremlin maintained, was that Western navy exercise was a risk to Russia, and that america was elevating tensions within the area by rising its “navy potential close to our borders.”
What Mr. Putin sees as a crimson line, Ukraine and the West see as affordable protection for a rustic that already misplaced management of Crimea — nonetheless “occupied territory” in america’ description — and has been engaged in a battle of attrition in Donbas, within the east.
Because the Crimea takeover, america has dedicated greater than $2.5 billion in safety help, together with air surveillance radars, counterartillery radars, drones, safe communications, armed patrol boats and, most significantly, Javelin anti-tank techniques. The final of these have anxious Russian navy leaders sufficient that a few of the tanks seen massing on the borders are sporting new deflectors, like a metallic umbrella, to deceive the missile’s homing techniques.