Biden slams Ukraine invasion as he reveals new sanctions that leave Putin untouched
President Biden condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as being “without justification” Thursday as he announced new sanctions and export restrictions against Moscow — but he declined to sanction Russian President Vladimir Putin personally and admitted that America’s allies opposed kicking Russia out of a key global banking system.
A visibly angry Biden called Putin “the aggressor” in Europe’s worst conflict since World War II and said that “he wants to, in fact, re-establish the former Soviet Union,” as a new report suggested US officials fear Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, may not hold out beyond this weekend.
“Putin chose this war. Now he and his country will bear the consequences,” the president added in remarks from the East Room of the White House, during which he also announced that 7,000 additional US troops would be sent to Germany to bolster NATO.
Meanwhile, Newsweek, citing three US officials, reported that Washington expects Kyiv to be taken within 96 hours and the leadership of Ukraine to be toppled within the following week as the result of an extensive ground campaign by Russia.
“After the air and artillery end and the ground war really starts, I think Kyiv falls in just a few days,” one former senior U.S. intelligence officer told the outlet. “The military may last slightly longer, but this isn’t going to last long.”
Despite the big talk, Biden was forced to deny that the threat of sanctions against Putin’s personal wealth was a bluff, insisting under questioning that such a move was “still on the table.”
“Why not sanction him today, sir? Why not sanction him today?” CNN’s Kaitlan Collins asked. Biden would not answer and called on a different journalist to ask a question.
Biden announced sanctions on four major Russian banks — including the country’s two largest, Sberbank and VTB Bank — and several oligarchs, as well as prohibitions on some high-tech US exports to Russia, after an hour-long call with the leaders of other G7 nations.
The president tweeted that he and the leaders of Canada, the European Union, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, NATO and the UK had “agreed to move forward on devastating packages of sanctions and other economic measures to hold Russia to account.”
However, Biden later acknowledged to reporters that European leaders, whom he did not name, had balked at blocking Russian access to SWIFT — the international payment system that is used to assist transactions by global banks.
Ukrainian officials, led by Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, had begged for the West to take the drastic step.
“I will not be diplomatic on this,” Kuleba tweeted Thursday morning. “Everyone who now doubts whether Russia should be banned from SWIFT has to understand that the blood of innocent Ukrainian men, women and children will be on their hands too. BAN RUSSIA FROM SWIFT.”
Hours later, Biden insisted that the sanctions announced Thursday were of “equal consequence, maybe more consequence” to removing Russia from SWIFT.
“You didn’t mention SWIFT in your sanctions that you announced,” one reporter pointed out to Biden. “Is there a reason why the US isn’t doing that? Is there disagreement among allies regarding SWIFT and whether Russia should be allowed to be part of it?”
“The sanctions that we’ve imposed on all of their banks have equal consequence, maybe more consequence, than SWIFT,” Biden insisted. “Number two, it is always an option. But right now, that’s not the position that the rest of Europe wishes to take.”
“They are profound sanctions,” the president insisted elsewhere in the Q-and-A. “Let’s have a conversation in another month or so to see if they’re working.”
However, a month may be too late, if the Newsweek report is accurate.
In a bizarre moment, Biden appeared to undermine his own argument for sanctions, claiming in response to a question that “no one expected” earlier restrictions to “prevent anything from happening” to Ukraine.
“This is going to take time. It’s not going to occur [where Putin’s] going to say ‘Oh my god, these sanctions are coming, I’m going to stand down,’” Biden said. “He’s gonna test the resolve of the West to see if we stay together and we will. We will, and it will impose significant costs on him.”
Republicans and even some Democrats criticized Biden for not imposing the most forceful measures possible in response to Russia’s all-out invasion of its western neighbor, whose population of 44 million is larger than that of any US state.
Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Menendez (D-NJ) said in a statement that “there is more that we can and should do.”
“Congress and the Biden administration must not shy away from any options — including sanctioning the Russian Central Bank, removing Russian banks from the SWIFT payment system, crippling Russia’s key industries, sanctioning Putin personally, and taking all steps to deprive Putin and his inner circle of their assets,” Menendez said.
Former US ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell, who also served as acting director of national intelligence, tweeted, “The Germans have vetoed the U.S. from using Swift sanctions. Biden deferred to them. America First vs consensus. These sanctions are not better than Swift. It’s an absurd statement.”
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) said in a Fox News interview, “The sanctions that President Biden announced a couple days ago were no more than quarter measures… Finally, today, we got half measures, but it took an invasion of Ukraine for that.”
Cotton added, “The president needs to bring our European partners along to ban Russia from the international banking payment system known as SWIFT. We need to sanction their oil and gas sector. We need to sanction their minerals and mining sector.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), meanwhile, voiced support for Biden’s actions.
“The leadership of President Biden and our allies to demonstrate overwhelming resolve is crucial in this moment of heartbreak and suffering for the Ukrainian people,” Pelosi said in a statement.
Former President Barack Obama said in a statement of his own that “every American, regardless of party, should support President Biden’s efforts, in coordination with our closest allies, to impose hard-hitting sanctions on Russia – sanctions that impose a real price on Russia’s autocratic elites.
The Treasury Department said in a statement that the sanctions announced Thursday “target nearly 80 percent of all banking assets in Russia and will have a deep and long-lasting effect on the Russian economy and financial system.” The Department also announced sanctions against Belarusian banks, the country’s defense industry and security officials over support for Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The export control measures will restrict Russia access to semiconductors, computers, telecommunications, information security equipment, lasers and sensors, which Biden said would limit Russia’s “ability to compete in a high tech 21st century economy.”
To address humanitarian needs inside Ukraine, the US Agency for International Development is setting up a 17-person Disaster Assistance Response Team in Poland, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said Thursday evening.
Putin said in a speech early Thursday local time that he ordered operations to “demilitarize” Ukraine after recognizing as independent two pro-Russia separatist self-declared republics in eastern Ukraine.
Footage posted on social media showed explosions and military aircraft operating across Ukraine, as well as destroyed buildings and military vehicles along roadways.
Biden warned for weeks that Russia planned to invade Ukraine and threatened to levy “the most severe sanctions that have ever been imposed” during a Feb. 7 news conference with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
Critics slammed Biden for failing to deter Putin, including with an initial “tranche” of limited sanctions Tuesday after Russia deployed troops into the rebel-held areas of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts within Ukraine’s borders.
Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), the third-ranking House Republican, blasted Biden as “unfit” to lead the free world.
“After just one year of a weak, feckless, and unfit President of the United States and Commander-in-Chief, the world is less safe. Rather than peace through strength, we are witnessing Joe Biden’s foreign policy of war through weakness,” Stefanik said.
Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.) said, “From impeding American energy production, to greenlighting Russian energy production, to dragging their feet on sanctions, to lobbying against legislation to hold Russia accountable, it is clear that the Biden Administration’s appeasement approach towards Russian aggression has failed.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said in a Fox News interview that he and Democratic colleagues planned to introduce legislation against Putin to seize assets that “he has stolen from the Russian people.”
“We need to have an economic embargo of basically all things Russia. I hate it for the Russian people, but why should we be traveling to Moscow freely and openly?” Graham said.
Graham later alleged that Biden “miscalculated” on Putin.
“They thought if they laid low and created some mystery about what they would do, that would deter Putin. Well, when you’re weak, you don’t have the luxury of being mysterious or nuanced,” Graham said.
“Now a strong person like [former President Donald] Trump could say things like, ‘Well, if you screw with me, all bets are off.’ That would actually chill people out because they believe he’s strong, but when you’re weak, you don’t have the ability to be nuanced. So the fatal mistake here was not to let Putin and his cronies know what would happen to the Russian economy and them as individuals. The strategy didn’t work.”
Several lawmakers expressed concern about China possibly taking similar action against Taiwan, which has had its own US-protected government since the end of the Chinese civil war in 1949.
Putin’s invasion of Ukraine “potentially emboldens other authoritarian powers to follow its path,” said Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.), a former US ambassador to Japan. “In particular, [Chinese President] Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party, with their sights set on Taiwan, are closely watching what happens.”
The Donetsk and Luhansk separatists began fighting against Ukraine’s central government in 2014 when Biden was vice president. The Kremlin-backed rebellion followed Russia’s annexation of Crimea after a popular uprising ousted Ukraine’s pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych.
Biden horrified Ukrainians last month when he said at his second solo White House press conference that a “minor incursion” by Russia might result in less-severe penalties due to disagreement among NATO allies. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky reprimanded Biden for the remark, while one Ukrainian official suggested the American president might have given Putin a “green light” to invade.
With Post wires
