Vice President Joe Biden slammed Russia’s incursions into Ukraine in a Saturday speech, saying that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s aggressive tactics would not be tolerated.
“Russia needs to understand as long as it continues its current course, the United States and God willing all of Europe and the international community will continue to impose costs for violations of basic international norms,” Biden said at the Munich Security Conference in Germany, according to pool reports.
Biden and Secretary of State John Kerry met with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, an ally of the West, to discuss the unrest in eastern Ukraine, according to a White House statement.
The vice president issued a scathing denouncement of Putin’s machinations in his speech.
“President Putin has to understand as he has changed so has our focus. We have moved from resetting this important relationship to reasserting the fundamental bedrock principles on which European freedom and stability rests. I will say it again: inviolate borders, no spheres of influence, the sovereign right to choose your own alliances,” Biden said.
Russia has been accused of aiding rebels to force annexation of the region, nearly one year after Ukraine’s mostly ethnic-Russian Crimea state voted to join Russia. Putin has denied involvement in the area.
Biden said the U.S. would continue to provide security support to Ukraine. While he applauded recent negotiations between Merkel, Putin and French President Francois Hollande in an attempt to de-escalate the Ukraine crisis, Biden said the Obama administration remained skeptical of Putin’s motives.
“Too many times President Putin has promised peace and delivered tanks, and troops, and weapons,” Biden said.
