Joe Biden adopts a tough new tone with Russia | The Economist - 0 views
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Mr Biden warned his Russian counterpart, threatening retribution if Russian troops currently massing on Ukraine’s borders launched an invasion.
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“He told President Putin directly that if Russia further invades Ukraine, the United States and our European allies would respond with strong economic measures,”
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“We would provide additional defensive material to the Ukrainians...And we would fortify our NATO allies on the eastern flank with additional capabilities in response to such an escalation.”
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Mr Sullivan did not spell out whether the sanctions would include the “nuclear option” of cutting Russia off from the Western financial networks, notably the SWIFT system of financial transfers
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He did, though, raise the prospect of asking Germany to halt the opening of Nord Stream 2, a pipeline built to pump Russian gas to Europe.
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Mr Putin says he wants a guarantee that Ukraine will never join NATO, and that it will not be a base for Western weapons that can threaten Russia—even though neither prospect seems remotely likely.
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in 2008 NATO declared that Ukraine and Georgia (another ex-Soviet republic that has lost territory to Russian-backed separatists) “will become members of NATO” even though they were not included in the formal “membership action plan”.
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“Countries should be able to freely choose who they associate with.” And yet, given the fragility of Ukraine’s government, the widespread corruption in the country and its unresolved conflict, membership of NATO seems a distant if not impossible goal
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Russian government is worried about NATO’s and Western countries’ growing role in arming and training Ukraine’s forces, to the point where they present a more capable opponent—not strong enough to resist a Russian invasion, but probably good enough to retake the breakaway regions of eastern Ukraine were they not protected by Russia.
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Mr Putin wants America to recognise that Ukraine should rightfully be within his sphere of influence
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In 2014 Mr Putin took over and annexed Crimea, and backed Russian-speaking separatists in the east of the country, crushing Ukrainian forces and creating the breakaway republics of Donetsk and Luhansk. The Minsk agreements, intended to end the conflict, would have created a highly decentralised country and, in effect, given Russia a veto over its actions.