After promising to impose “severe and swift” sanctions on Russia if it invaded Ukraine, the Biden administration is facing questions over its use of economic firepower in responding to the latest bout of Kremlin aggression.
The White House has painstakingly laid out its view of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s movements, announcing Tuesday a “first tranche” of penalties after it said it had witnessed the beginning of a Russian invasion of Ukraine.
“To put it simply, Russia just announced that it is carving out a big chunk of Ukraine,” President Joe Biden said in remarks in the East Room of the White House.
BIDEN ORDERS TROOPS TO BALTIC REGION FOLLOWING RUSSIA’S INVASION OF UKRAINE
After Putin officially recognized two occupied regions Monday and ordered troops to go into the territories, the Biden administration announced limited sanctions and said there would be more to come.
“He’s setting up a rationale to take more territory by force, in my view,” Biden said at the White House. “This is the beginning of a Russian invasion of Ukraine, as he indicated and asked permission to be able to do from his Duma.”
Officials began to speak more forcefully about Russia’s activity Tuesday and levied new sanctions telegraphed in a call the evening before.
Daleep Singh, Biden’s deputy national economic council director, called Putin’s actions “the beginning of an invasion” and warned that “no Russian financial institution is safe if the invasion proceeds.”
“This is just the beginning of our response,” he said Tuesday.
Biden’s principal deputy national security adviser, Jon Finer, told CNN, “An invasion is an invasion, and that is what is underway.” But Finer also said Russia has been invading Ukraine since 2014.
“That’s the doublespeak of politics. One boot crosses the Ukrainian border, and then, after it happens, we start discussing what exactly is the Ukrainian border,” said Uljana Zamaslo, an English teacher in Lviv, Ukraine.
Frustration has continued to mount over the White House’s response to an invasion that it maintains started nearly a decade ago.
“They’re saying, ‘We have sanctions prepared, and they’re strict, and they’re strong, and they’re going to be crippling,’” Zamaslo told the Washington Examiner. “And then when it happens, they weren’t quick, they weren’t strong, and they certainly were not crippling.”
On Tuesday, Biden announced blocking sanctions on two Russian financial institutions, VEB and Promsvyazbank, expanded sanctions on Russian sovereign debt, and unspecified sanctions on members of the Russian elite and their family members.
Brian O’Toole, an Atlantic Council senior fellow and former Treasury Department official, said the measures “fall short” of the major actions that had been promised but leave room to escalate — assuming Moscow continues its attack on Ukraine.
“I fear that Putin may assess the West does not have the stomach to impose truly significant measures given the incremental nature of today’s announcement,” O’Toole said in a statement. “I hope that time proves him wrong, as it is clear he has no intention of stopping with just taking the breakaway territories.”
The White House’s response has, at times, appeared calibrated to a moving target of past, present, and future Russian aggression.
Last month, Biden’s press secretary warned that any troops moving across Ukraine’s border would prompt a weighty response. “President Biden has been clear with the Russian President,” Jen Psaki said in a January statement. “If any Russian military forces move across the Ukrainian border, that’s a renewed invasion, and it will be met with a swift, severe, and united response from the United States and our allies.”
Appearing on CNN a few days later, Secretary of State Antony Blinken was asked, “Would seizing or recognizing the entire Donbas region qualify as an invasion and result in the crippling sanctions that you’re threatening?”
“If a single additional Russian force goes into Ukraine in an aggressive way, that would trigger a swift, a severe, and a united response from us and from Europe,” Blinken said.
And while the White House recognized Tuesday that Russia’s actions constituted an “invasion,” escalating its rhetoric and responding with a slate of coordinated economic penalties, its decision to withhold more potent actions prompted new questions about what would start the next tranche.
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Asked on Tuesday whether Russia’s deployment of forces into unoccupied areas could be one trigger, Psaki demurred.
“I’m not going to outline for you ‘if this, then that,’” she said.
