WASHINGTON: The United States and its western allies lashed out at Russia for its invasion of Ukraine on Thursday, ramping up sanctions and strengthening their defence of NATO frontline in the gravest crisis to beset Europe since World War Two.
Faced with an invasion under a nuclear cover, US President Joe Bided rallied NATO allies, G7 partners, and domestic opinion to tighten the screws on Russian President Vladimir Putin after Moscow shrugged off the first round of sanctions to proceed with the long forecast invasion — which Russia called “special military action” — of Ukraine.
In remarks ahead of the invasion, Putin implicitly invoked a nuclear response if the US and its allies intervened.
“Whoever tries to impede us, let alone create threats for our country and its people, must know that the Russian response will be immediate and lead to the consequences you have never seen in history.” Putin said in a television address, adding, “All relevant decisions have been taken. I hope you hear me.”
In New York, the United Nations also came down on Russia, its secretary general Antonio Gutteres describing the invasion as the “saddest moment in my tenure,” while appealing to Putin, “in the name of humanity, please bring your forces back to Russia.” Putin’s announcement of “special military action” in Ukraine came even as the UN was discussing Moscow’s earlier moves into in the Donbas region.
In one of the most vivid moments in geo-political television history, Ukraine’s ambassador to the UN Sergiy Kyslytsya, directly addressed his Russian counterpart Vasily Nebenzya, who was presiding over the session, calling him to relinquish his chair, and phone Putin and Lavrov (Russia’s foreign minister) to “ask them to stop the aggression on my people.”
“There is no purgatory for war criminals, ambassador … they go straight to hell,” he told the Russian chair. Envoys from US and UK were later seen comforting an emotional Ukrainian envoy.
Earlier, President Biden accused Putin of choosing a “premeditated war” that he predicted will bring a catastrophic loss of life and human suffering.
“Russia alone is responsible for the death and destruction this attack will bring, and the United States and its allies and partners will respond in a united and decisive way. The world will hold Russia accountable,” Biden said in a late night address.
In the morning, Biden convened an in-person meeting of his National Security Council in the White House situation room, followed by a virtual meeting of G7 leaders to consider the western response to Putin’s move that surprisingly has some support among rightwingers in the Trump camp who argue that the US has no stakes in a fight that is primarily European, and that Washington should focus on its southern borders and its internal problems.
Trump in fact called Putin “smart” “savvy” and a “genius” for his move into Ukraine while claiming with typical bombast that this would have never happened on his watch.
Trump critics agree it wouldn’t have, only because he would have gift-wrapped Ukraine and handed it over to Putin. Others went further back to even Barack Obama to explain Washington’s timid response, which some attributed to the attrition Washington suffered in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The alternative narrative is that successive US Presidents allowed Atlantic militarists in the US establishment to push NATO to Russia’s doorstep, leaving Putin feeling cornered. Trump’s British surrogate Nigel Farage in fact tweeted that Putin’s Ukraine invasion was “a consequence of EU and NATO expansion, which came to a head in 2014. It made no sense to poke the Russian bear with a stick.”
Before ramping up sanctions, the US and its allies got a shellacking for choosing the path of incremental measures following initial Russian incursion into Ukraine, hoping to ward off a full-scale invasion. Some experts said that was akin to “bringing a pea-shooter to a gun-fight” and argued that it simply emboldened Putin to go all in.
US officials defended the approach. “We’re not cowboys applying arbitrary and capricious sanctions to the rest of the world.” Daleep Singh, President Biden’s pointman on sanctions said, explaining that the US was following a set of guiding principles with regards to sanctions, which he promised would eventually hurt Moscow.
Faced with an invasion under a nuclear cover, US President Joe Bided rallied NATO allies, G7 partners, and domestic opinion to tighten the screws on Russian President Vladimir Putin after Moscow shrugged off the first round of sanctions to proceed with the long forecast invasion — which Russia called “special military action” — of Ukraine.
In remarks ahead of the invasion, Putin implicitly invoked a nuclear response if the US and its allies intervened.
“Whoever tries to impede us, let alone create threats for our country and its people, must know that the Russian response will be immediate and lead to the consequences you have never seen in history.” Putin said in a television address, adding, “All relevant decisions have been taken. I hope you hear me.”
In New York, the United Nations also came down on Russia, its secretary general Antonio Gutteres describing the invasion as the “saddest moment in my tenure,” while appealing to Putin, “in the name of humanity, please bring your forces back to Russia.” Putin’s announcement of “special military action” in Ukraine came even as the UN was discussing Moscow’s earlier moves into in the Donbas region.
In one of the most vivid moments in geo-political television history, Ukraine’s ambassador to the UN Sergiy Kyslytsya, directly addressed his Russian counterpart Vasily Nebenzya, who was presiding over the session, calling him to relinquish his chair, and phone Putin and Lavrov (Russia’s foreign minister) to “ask them to stop the aggression on my people.”
“There is no purgatory for war criminals, ambassador … they go straight to hell,” he told the Russian chair. Envoys from US and UK were later seen comforting an emotional Ukrainian envoy.
Earlier, President Biden accused Putin of choosing a “premeditated war” that he predicted will bring a catastrophic loss of life and human suffering.
“Russia alone is responsible for the death and destruction this attack will bring, and the United States and its allies and partners will respond in a united and decisive way. The world will hold Russia accountable,” Biden said in a late night address.
In the morning, Biden convened an in-person meeting of his National Security Council in the White House situation room, followed by a virtual meeting of G7 leaders to consider the western response to Putin’s move that surprisingly has some support among rightwingers in the Trump camp who argue that the US has no stakes in a fight that is primarily European, and that Washington should focus on its southern borders and its internal problems.
Trump in fact called Putin “smart” “savvy” and a “genius” for his move into Ukraine while claiming with typical bombast that this would have never happened on his watch.
Trump critics agree it wouldn’t have, only because he would have gift-wrapped Ukraine and handed it over to Putin. Others went further back to even Barack Obama to explain Washington’s timid response, which some attributed to the attrition Washington suffered in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The alternative narrative is that successive US Presidents allowed Atlantic militarists in the US establishment to push NATO to Russia’s doorstep, leaving Putin feeling cornered. Trump’s British surrogate Nigel Farage in fact tweeted that Putin’s Ukraine invasion was “a consequence of EU and NATO expansion, which came to a head in 2014. It made no sense to poke the Russian bear with a stick.”
Before ramping up sanctions, the US and its allies got a shellacking for choosing the path of incremental measures following initial Russian incursion into Ukraine, hoping to ward off a full-scale invasion. Some experts said that was akin to “bringing a pea-shooter to a gun-fight” and argued that it simply emboldened Putin to go all in.
US officials defended the approach. “We’re not cowboys applying arbitrary and capricious sanctions to the rest of the world.” Daleep Singh, President Biden’s pointman on sanctions said, explaining that the US was following a set of guiding principles with regards to sanctions, which he promised would eventually hurt Moscow.