Saturday afternoon the White House press office released a “Readout of President Obama’s Call with President Putin.” Here it is, with interpretative commentary:
Paragraph One:
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Commentary:
President Obama told President Putin that Russia had promised repeatedly that if the Ukrainians liked their country, they could keep it. It’s bad of President Putin to break this promise.
Paragraphs Two and Three:
President Obama told President Putin that, if Russia has concerns about the treatment of ethnic Russian and minority populations in Ukraine, the appropriate way to address them is peacefully through direct engagement with the government of Ukraine and through the dispatch of international observers under the auspices of the United Nations Security Council or the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). As a member of both organizations, Russia would be able to participate. President Obama urged an immediate effort to initiate a dialogue between Russia and the Ukrainian government, with international facilitation, as appropriate. The United States is prepared to participate.
Commentary:
It’s important to sugar coat the one sentence of condemnation at the end of Paragraph One with two paragraphs of mollification. Make no mistake: President Obama feels President Putin’s heartfelt pain about, and appreciates his sincere concern for, the ethnic Russians in Ukraine.
Paragraph Four:
Commentary:
President Obama will be doing a lot of consulting about Russia–and a tiny bit of suspending meetings with Russia–over the next few days. But in the fog of diplomacy, he wants to make crystal clear to President Putin something Putin probably hadn’t thought of: that invading a neighbor “would negatively impact Russia’s standing in the international community.”
Paragraph Five:
Commentary:
President Obama will be doing a lot of consulting with, and some assisting of, Ukraine. But Ukraine can expect no serious assistance in getting Russian troops off Ukraine soil or helping secure Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. Nor is President Obama committed to seeing to it that President Putin pay a real price for his actions. It would after all be unfair to treat President Putin worse than President Assad or Ayatollah Khamenei.
