President Obama admitted a few weeks ago in a White House meeting that Crimea is “gone,” the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee said Thursday.
“I was in a meeting in the White House a few weeks ago, and the president was giving us a synopsis of the problems around the world, and I said, ‘You didn’t mention Crimea. Is that just gone?’ And the basic answer was, ‘Yeah, that’s gone,’” Rep. Buck McKeon, R-Calif., told an audience at the American Enterprise Institute.
McKeon was reacting to a comment by Obama in his Wednesday night speech outlining a strategy against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, where the president said: “It is America that has rallied the world against Russian aggression, and in support of the Ukrainian people’s right to determine their own destiny.”
McKeon, who earlier had criticized the president for a lack of focus on foreign policy, said he had been surprised that Obama would cite Ukraine in a speech designed to reassure Americans and the world that he is determined to defeat the new threat from the Islamic State. Though the United States has sanctioned Russia for seizing Crimea from Ukraine and continuing to threaten other parts of the country, the sanctions do not appear to have deterred Moscow.
“I don’t think that’s a good example of American leadership,” McKeon said.
