The White House bristled at the suggestion it was provoking a Russian President Vladimir Putin-led strike against Ukraine by disregarding the Kremlin’s national security concerns.
“When the fox is screaming from the top of the henhouse that he’s scared of the chickens, which is essentially what they’re doing, that fear isn’t recorded as a statement of fact,” press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters on Tuesday.
President Joe Biden remains committed to diplomacy, but he has to balance that idea with defending U.S. values, Psaki said. She added that that included Ukraine’s right to self-determination regarding NATO membership.
“All of our preference is to de-escalate and to prevent an invasion from happening, but that is up to President Putin to make that decision,” she said.
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At the same time, Psaki dismissed the prospect of mutual de-escalation because Russia is the “aggressor,” with 100,000-plus troops stationed along its border with Ukraine.
“We’re working with NATO countries to make sure they feel secure in this moment,” she said. “It is not the same thing, and I think we need to be careful about comparing them as the same thing.”
The United States and its allies have “ignored” “fundamental Russian concerns,” such as the possibility of Ukraine joining NATO, Putin said earlier Tuesday. During a joint press conference with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Putin accused the U.S. of trying to “contain” Russia.
“I hope that this dialogue will continue,” he said. “I hope that we will eventually find this solution, although it is not an easy one, and we are aware of this.”
Psaki borrowed her fox-hen analogy from Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Blinken used the analogy last month when he was asked about “Moscow’s increasingly harsh rhetoric as it continues to push the false narrative that Ukraine seeks to provoke a conflict with Russia.”
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“That’s a little bit like the fox saying it had no choice but to attack the henhouse because somehow the hens presented a threat to it,” he said at the time.
