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Obama Vows Russia Penalties, but Avoids Calling Ukraine Advance an Invasion Obama Urges Calm in Face of Two Crises
(about 3 hours later)
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. WASHINGTON — President Obama confronted a pair of volatile international crises with restraint on Thursday as he said he was not close to authorizing airstrikes against Islamic extremists in Syria and played down the latest escalation of Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine.
“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.” With tensions rising in Europe and the Middle East, Mr. Obama emphasized that a military response would not resolve either situation and pledged to build international coalitions to grapple with them. Despite pressure from within his own government for more assertive action, he tried to avoid inflaming passions as he sought new approaches.
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. Mr. Obama confirmed that he had asked Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel for options for military strikes in Syria to target the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, which has established a virtual state straddling the border of those countries. But speaking with reporters before a meeting of his national security team, the president said no action in Syria was imminent because he had not even seen military plans.
“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.” “We don’t have a strategy yet,” he said. “I think what I’ve seen in some of the news reports suggests that folks are getting a little further ahead of where we’re at than we currently are.”
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. His comment instantly drew fire from critics and prompted aides to clarify that he was only talking about what to do in Syria. Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, posted a series of Twitter messages and went on television to say that Mr. Obama did, in fact, have a strategy to combat ISIS in Iraq. He said it included military action, building an inclusive government, supporting Iraq’s armed forces and recruiting regional partners.
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 seemed equally intent on managing expectations about what the United States may do in response to reports that Russia has sent forces into Ukraine . Although he said he expected to impose additional sanctions, he declined to call Russia’s latest moves an invasion, as Ukraine and others have, saying they were “not really a shift” but just “a little more overt” form of longstanding Russian violations of Ukrainian sovereignty.
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.” “I consider the actions that we’ve seen in the last week a continuation of what’s been taking place for months now,” Mr. Obama said. “The 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.” In both cases, Mr. Obama took a strikingly different tone than his own advisers have in recent days. The nation’s top military officer and the president’s deputy national security adviser both talked in sharper terms over the last week about the possibility of striking in Syria, while Mr. Obama’s ambassador to the United Nations expressed moral outrage on Thursday over Russia’s latest actions in Ukraine.
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. In a blistering statement to the United Nations Security Council just hours before the president spoke, the ambassador, Samantha Power, bluntly accused Russia of lying about its intervention. “The mask is coming off” Russia’s denials, Ms. Power said, calling its actions a “threat to all of our peace and security.”
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.” “Russia has come before this Council to say everything except the truth,” she said. “It has manipulated. It has obfuscated. It has outright lied. So we have learned to measure Russia by its actions and not by its words. In the last 48 hours, Russia’s actions have spoken volumes.”
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. On both Syria and Ukraine, Mr. Obama’s administration is engaged in separate, if parallel, debates about how aggressive to be, with the president seemingly acting as a brake on the more robust actions some advisers seek.
“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. Administration officials have been preparing for another round of sanctions against Russia in conjunction with European allies, but they are unsure whether the president will take them to the next level, affecting broader swaths of Russia’s financial and energy sectors at the risk of harming American and European economic interests.
“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.” Some officials have urged going beyond such economic measures and intervening more directly to tilt the odds on the battlefield in favor of Ukraine’s new pro-Western government. Not only do some administration officials want to speed up promises of limited aid to Ukraine’s military, but some are pressing to provide arms and intelligence that would help Ukraine counter the sophisticated equipment that the United States and Europe say Russia is providing to separatists, as well as to its own forces now crossing the border.
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. Similarly, officials are struggling with the question of how far to go in taking on ISIS in Syria, where the president has been deeply reluctant to intervene in a bloody civil war. Mr. Obama has already ordered at least one Special Operations raid in Syria — a failed effort to rescue American hostages held by ISIS — but it is unclear how willing he would be to authorize more. Officials are debating whether an air campaign would involve manned jets or just drones, and whether they would target massed forces or specific leaders.
“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. These were questions Mr. Obama was not eager to address during his session with reporters on Thursday. Instead, he noted that even the airstrikes he had authorized in Iraq for the last few weeks were “limited” and said, “Syria is not simply a military issue; it’s also a political issue.”
The president said he was 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 did not know yet what he planned to do. “I don’t want to put the cart before the horse,” he said. Mr. Obama acknowledged, however, that Syria had given ISIS “a safe haven here in ungoverned spaces” and that to roll back the group, “we’re going to have to build a regional strategy.”
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 had detained regular Russian Army personnel in Luhansk on the same day. He used the occasion to chastise allies in the Middle East for playing both sides when it came to ISIS and said he was sending Secretary of State John Kerry to the region to assemble a coalition against the group. He also rejected the notion that attacking ISIS might help President Bashar al-Assad of Syria in the civil war there. “I don’t think this is a situation where we have to choose between Assad or the kinds of people who carry on the incredible violence that we’ve been seeing there,” he said.
She mocked the Russian explanation that those soldiers had wandered into Ukraine by mistake and added that Russia had fired rockets from its territory at Ukrainian positions in Novoazovsk and then attacked with two columns of armored vehicles and tanks. The Russian escalation came even as Mr. Obama prepared to travel to Europe next week to meet with NATO allies and try to reassure the Baltic States that the United States would stand by them in case of aggression from Moscow. Mr. Obama spoke by telephone on Thursday with Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany to discuss their next moves and invited President Petro O. Poroshenko of Ukraine to visit him in Washington next month.
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. While Mr. Obama has been reluctant to send substantial American forces to 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 direct involvement. “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 Russia. But I think it is very important to recognize that a military solution to this problem is not going to be forthcoming.”