F.P. Report
Washington, D.C: Antony J. Blinken, Secretary of State has said that since Foreign Minister Kuleba and I were in Munich just a few days ago, Russia’s aggression toward Ukraine and its rejection of international law and diplomacy have accelerated.
Yesterday, President Putin recognized the so-called “independence” of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Ukraine, where violent Russian-backed separatists have been fighting a war since 2014. A few hours later, he gave authorization to Russian troops to enter those regions.
For weeks, we’ve been warning the world that Russia was mobilizing for military aggression against Ukraine. We’ve made clear that if Russia invaded, the United States and our allies and partners would impose swift and severe consequences.
Now that Russia has moved against Ukraine, so, too, have we moved on our strong and unified response.
This afternoon, the President announced the first round of sanctions on Russia in response to its actions. These have been closely coordinated with our allies and partners. We’ll continue to escalate our sanctions if Russia escalates its aggression toward Ukraine.
Today, we’re implementing full blocking sanctions on two large Russian financial institutions, VEB and Promsvyazbank, both of which have close links to the Kremlin and the Russian military. Collectively, they hold more than $80 billion in assets. These measures will freeze their assets in the United States, prohibit American individuals or businesses from doing any transactions with them, shut them out of the global financial system, and foreclose access to the U.S. dollar.
We’re expanding our existing sanctions on Russian sovereign debt. We’ve already prohibited U.S. financial institutions from trading in Russian sovereign debt in the primary market; now we’re extending that prohibition to the secondary market. These prohibitions will cut off the Russian Government from a key avenue by which it raises capital to fund its priorities and will increase future financing costs. They also deny Russia access to key U.S. markets and investors.
Starting today, we’ll impose sanctions on members of the Russian elite and their family members, all of whom directly benefit from their connections with the Kremlin. Other Russian elites and their family members are on notice that additional actions could be taken against them.
These steps are in addition to the executive order President Biden issued yesterday to prohibit new investment, trade, and financing by Americans to, from, and in the so-called DNR and LNR regions.
And just as the President said we would do, today the Department of Defense announced that we would be sending additional forces to NATO’s eastern flank to deter and defend against any Russian aggression directed at our allies.
We also made clear that if Russia invaded Ukraine, we would act with Germany to ensure that the Nord Stream 2 pipeline does not move forward. Today, Chancellor Scholz announced that the German Government is suspending the pipeline indefinitely. We’ve been in close consultation with Germany throughout this process. We welcome this swift and decisive and action. And we’re executing a plan in close coordination with allies and partners to secure the stability of global energy supplies, which is in all of our interests.
The United States and our allies and partners are united in the face of Russian aggression. This morning, the European Union and the United Kingdom announced a series of strong complementary actions.
President Putin’s deeply disturbing speech yesterday and his statements today make clear to the world how he views Ukraine: not as a sovereign nation with the right to territorial integrity and independence, but rather as a creation of Russia, and therefore subordinate to Russia. It’s a completely false assertion that ignores history, international law, and the tens of millions of patriotic Ukrainians who are proud citizens of a free and independent Ukraine.
Now that we’ve heard it directly from President Putin himself, it confirms what we’ve been saying: that he did not send more than 150,000 troops to the Ukrainian border because of benign military exercises, or to respond to threatened aggression from Ukraine, or to stop a fabricated genocide by Ukraine, or any other manufactured reason. His plan all along has been to invade Ukraine; to control Ukraine and its people; to destroy Ukraine’s democracy, which offers a stark contrast to the autocracy that he leads; to reclaim Ukraine as a part of Russia.
That’s why this is the greatest threat to security in Europe since World War II. Ukraine is in danger. President Putin is blatantly and violently breaking the laws and principles that have kept the peace across Europe and around the world for decades.
Yesterday, at an emergency session of the UN Security Council requested by Ukraine, the United States and many other countries condemned Russia’s renewed attack on Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity as a violation of international law and the United Nations Charter. U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield underscored that President Putin has now torn to shreds the Minsk Agreements, which sought to end the conflict in the Donbas region of Ukraine peacefully, through diplomacy. President Putin himself essentially declared those agreements null and void.
The complete abdication of Russia’s commitments under the Minsk Agreements is just the latest demonstration of Russia’s hypocrisy when it comes to the agreements that it claims to seek and to uphold. Since the beginning of this Russian-manufactured crisis, Moscow has insisted that only legally binding agreements could satisfy its security concerns. But the Minsk Agreements now join a long line of agreements, many legally binding, that President Putin has broken.
These include the Helsinki Final Act, in which all OSCE countries, including Russia, pledged to respect national sovereignty and territorial integrity and refrain from the threat of the use of force; the Charter of Paris, which further established countries’ responsibilities to honor those pledges; the Conventional Armed Forces in Europe Treaty, which limits the deployment of military equipment in Europe; the Vienna Document, in which all OSCE countries, including Russia, agreed to confidence-and security-building measures to increase transparency and predictability about their military activities; and of course, the Budapest Memorandum, in which Russia promised to respect Ukraine’s independence and sovereignty in its 1994 borders and refrain from using force against Ukraine.
In the past 24 hours alone, with his actions toward Ukraine, President Putin has violated all of these agreements. He is undoing more than 30 years’ worth of painstaking diplomacy by Russia and the countries and institutions of Europe and the North Atlantic region to preserve stability and security for the sake of hundreds of millions of our citizens.
Every time Russia breaks one of these agreements, it not only endangers the countries that it’s threatening at the time, but nations everywhere that have been made safer and more secure by the international rules-based order.
Last week, I agreed to meet Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov this week on February 24th to discuss our countries’ respective concerns about European security, but only if Russia did not invade Ukraine. Now that we see the invasion is beginning and Russia has made clear its wholesale rejection of diplomacy, it does not make sense to go forward with that meeting at this time. I consulted with our allies and partners – all agree – and today I sent Foreign Minister Lavrov a letter informing him of this.
The United States, and I personally, remain committed to diplomacy if Russia is prepared to take demonstrable steps to provide the international community with any degree of confidence that it’s serious about de-escalating and finding a diplomatic solution. We will proceed, in coordination with allies and partners, based on Russia’s actions and the facts on the ground. But we will not allow Russia to claim the pretense of diplomacy at the same time it accelerates its march down the path of conflict and war.
There is no question what has happened here. We’ve all seen how Russia has relentlessly mobilized for war despite intensive efforts by others, including the United States, to engage them on a diplomatic path. We’ve seen through their false flags; we’ve predicted their lies. In the hours and days ahead, any further escalatory steps by Russia will be met with further swift and severe measures, coordinated with allies and partners, on top of those announced today. We’ll continue to stand with our allies and partners to support Ukraine as it faces Russia’s threats with courage and strength. And we’ll continue to defend the international laws that keep every country in the world safe from the kind of aggression that Russia is now inflicting upon Ukraine.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Kuleba has said that I’m grateful to Secretary Blinken for welcoming me in D.C. today. We – I think we spoke – this is our third or fourth encounter in the last four days, and this speaks for the dynamics and the quality of our relationship, but also for the urgency of the current crisis that needs to be handled. We meet at a very tense and responsible time for Ukraine, for the United States, and for the world. We all are at a critical juncture for the security of Europe, as well as international peace and security more broadly. Russian aggression has brought the world to the edge of the largest catastrophe since World War II.
Yesterday, President Putin moved to recognize two pieces of Ukrainian land as independent entities. Ukraine does not and will never recognize this absurdity, neither will the world recognize it. In fact, what Putin recognized is not the so-called Donetsk People Republic and Luhansk People Republic. He recognized his direct responsibility for the war against Ukraine and an unprovoked and unjustified war on another sovereign state in Europe, which Russia now intensifies.
President Putin killed Minsk Agreements, and more broadly, he attacked the world order. Needless to say, Russia’s move is a grave breach of international law and a new act of aggression against Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. Therefore, Ukraine strongly believes the time for sanctions is now, and in this context we welcome today’s announcement of sanctions by President Biden. The world must respond with all its economic might to punish Russia for the crimes it has already committed and ahead of the crimes it plans to commit. Hit Russia’s economy now and hit it hard.
I commend immense efforts of the U.S. diplomacy led by Tony to mobilize the global coalition of allies and partners to stop Russia. The entire world stands today with Ukraine, and rightly so. Putin wants much more than a war-torn piece of Ukrainian land and people living there. What stops him is only our unity and resolve, and we can still stop him.
Ukraine continues the engagement with the United States, EU, and NATO in diplomatic efforts to ease tensions. Yet, we also stand ready for any possible development. We had a focused discussion today with Secretary Blinken on steps to protect Ukraine and our multi-dimensional resilience. One of the – proposal that we put forward today is designing a program similar to the Lend-Lease implemented during the World War II to support the war efforts of the Allies in Eastern – in east – in Europe. This program will help to ensure sustainable – sustainability and will improve efficiency in the – in strengthening the capacity of Ukraine to defend itself.
The last point that I would like to make: Today we discussed some very specific ideas, and we appreciate very concrete steps made by the United States. These days we receive proposals from some countries to condemn Russia’s behavior, to condemn but not follow the condemnation with action. And I would like to say that condemnations are important, but it’s actions that really matter now, these days. And I am grateful to our strategic partner, the United States, for its ironclad support, including military, economic, and political diplomatic assistance provided to Ukraine. The Ukrainian people will surely remember the United States standing with Ukraine at this decisive moment in history.
