Secretary of State Antony Blinken attempted to patch the trans-Atlantic effort to deter a Russian invasion of Ukraine, as officials in Kyiv seethe at President Joe Biden’s apparent expectation that Russian President Vladimir Putin will order at least a “minor incursion” into the war-torn country.
“What I heard President Biden said yesterday is that he doesn’t believe that President Putin has yet made up his mind,” Blinken told reporters in Berlin, as he continues his tricity trek across Central Europe to try to avert a widened war. “Our task is … to make clear the different options that President Putin actually has before him — dialogue and diplomacy on the one hand, conflict and consequences on the other hand — to hopefully deter and dissuade him from renewing his aggression against Ukraine.”
Biden, in a discussion of the Russian troop presence on Ukrainian borders, surmised that Putin “will move in” to Ukrainian territory, though he characterized that forecast as a “guess.” Yet he stunned officials around the world when he suggested that Putin has the option of conducting a “minor incursion” against Ukraine that might not provoke a unified trans-Atlantic response, an extemporaneous remark that Ukrainians fear will make an assault more attractive to Putin.
“It’s one thing if it’s a minor incursion, and then we end up having a fight about what to do and not do, etc.,” Biden told reporters. “If there’s something that is — where there’s Russian forces crossing the border, killing Ukrainian fighters, etc., I think that changes everything.”
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Biden acknowledged that “there are differences in NATO as to what countries are willing to do depending on what happens.” That statement undermined the message that Blinken has been trying to communicate for weeks, including in his visit to Kyiv on Wednesday, but the envoy tried to get back on track in Germany.
“We are speaking and acting together with one voice when it comes to Russia,” he said Thursday. “That unity gives us strength … it’s also why Russia recklessly seeks to divide us.”
Blinken continued that effort with a speech at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences, where he cast Putin’s claim to feel threatened by NATO as a bad-faith justification for his desire to subjugate Ukraine.
“This crisis is not primarily about weapons or military base,” Blinken said in the Thursday address. “It’s about the sovereignty and self-determination of Ukraine, and all states, and at its core, it’s about Russia’s rejection of the post-Cold War Europe that is whole, free, and at peace.”
Blinken recalled that Putin, as long ago as 2008, told President George W. Bush that “Ukraine is not a country.” Yet this American rhetorical defense of Ukraine’s sovereignty failed to curb the backlash in Kyiv against Biden’s off-key rhetoric.
“We want to remind the great powers that there are no minor incursions and small nations,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy wrote on social media. “Just as there are no minor casualties and little grief from the loss of loved ones. I say this as the President of a great power.”
Blinken, who met German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock individually and in a meeting with representatives from the United Kingdom and France, tried to renew the threat of unanimous trans-Atlantic response to Russian aggression.
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“The United States will continue to work with our allies and partners … throughout the international community to make clear that there are two paths before Russia: the path to diplomacy that can lead to peace and security and the path of aggression that will lead only to conflict, severe consequences, international condemnation,” he said.
