Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said Tuesday that Russia has engaged in “reckless activity” by what he called its “use of a weapon of mass destruction” in Europe for the first time since World War II.
Mattis said Russia was guilty of “attempted murder of a man and his daughter” in the nerve agent attack against Russian double agent Sergei Skripal in Salisbury, England.
“Russian has chosen to be a strategic competitor, even to the point of reckless activity,” Mattis told reporters in an impromptu off-camera briefing at the Pentagon.
“Russia has the potential to be a partner with Europe. Its fortunes are married to Europe,” Mattis said. But he added “I think that right now we have to recognize that they have chosen to seek a different relationship with the NATO nations.”
Mattis said the Kremlin’s denials are simply not credible given the evidence and follow a pattern of denying things the U.S. can plainly see.
“They take the insignia off soldiers’ uniforms, and they go into Crimea. They say they have nothing to do with what’s going on with the separatists in Eastern Ukraine. I’m not sure how they can say that with a straight face. They point out that they can’t be proven to have tried to kill the person in Salisbury. They are doing things they believe are deniable, so they are trying to break the unity of the western alliance, NATO,” he said.
Mattis stopped short of accusing Russian President Vladimir Putin of directly ordering the murder of Skripal, but said, “certainly he is responsible as head of state.”
