A senior State Department official said Thursday in Belgium that the Obama administration’s plan to deal with Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 is to keep talking with Russia to see if that resolves the situation.
Ahead of a NATO meeting, the official rejected the idea that the U.S. has essentially given up the goal of getting Russia out of Crimea, which it annexed from Ukraine more than two years ago.
Instead, the official said the U.S. and other countries have ceased various kinds of cooperation with Russia, in the hopes of pressuring Russia to abandon its prize.
“[Y]ou may recall that over the years of NATO-Russia cooperation, which began in the ’90s, we also had a very robust menu of practical cooperation with Russia,” the official said on background. “[A]ll of that remains suspended as a result of their behavior in Ukraine, and it will continue to be suspended.”
“I think the issue here is that we’re going to try to keep the lines of communication open and see whether continuing to talk helps at all, but we’re not going to resume practical cooperation in the current environment,” the official added.
“I think our message is pretty clear to Russia,” the official concluded.
