WASHINGTON — Standing on Russia’s doorstep in the nation of Estonia, President Obama on Wednesday derided Russia’s “brazen assault” on Ukraine and pledged that the U.S. would defend any NATO ally facing a similar threat.
“You lost your independence once before,” Obama told a packed concert hall in the Estonian capital of Tallinn, after meeting with Baltic leaders. “With NATO, you’ll never lose it again.”
Obama spoke on the eve of a NATO summit in Wales designed to show a united front by the Western powers amid ongoing doubts about whether their economic sanctions are affecting Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“This is a moment of testing,” a low-key but firm Obama told the crowd as he extolled history’s lessons on the ultimate strength of freedom and democracy over aggression.
He called Russia’s invasion of eastern Ukraine and its support of pro-Moscow rebels “a brazen assault on the territorial sovereignty of Ukraine.. borders cannot be redrawn at the barrel of a gun.”
The crisis is indisputably a result of those rebels “encouraged by Russia, supplied by Russia, armed by Russia,” Obama said. And he belittled Russia’s claims that its personnel in eastern Ukraine were simply on a peacekeeping mission.
“They are Russian combat forces with Russian weapons in Russian tanks,” said Obama, who has faced criticism by Republicans that he has been too cautious in dealing with Putin.
Obama likened Putin’s annexation of Crimea to the former Soviet Union’s annexation of the Baltic states of Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia, all of whom gained their independence and joined NATO after the Soviet Union’s collapse and the end of the Cold War.
He made clear the Estonians themselves were symbols of justice and idealism winning out over pure military power, given their history of being victims of aggression but ultimately persevering.
“You never gave up when the Red Army came in from the East or the Nazi Army came in from the West,” he said.
He received warm applause as he said that the smallest members of NATO are no less important than the bigger ones, like Great Britain and Germany, and that protecting their territorial integrity is as important a priority.
“We will defend our NATO allies, and that means every ally. …. There are no junior partners or senior partners, they are just allies,” Obama said.
Obama also insisted that Russia “is paying a price” for its aggression.
The U.S.-led sanctions are “weakening Russia. They’re hurting the Russian people,” he said, citing a variety of economic indicators. Critics, however, suggest that the penalties have done little to slow Putin’s on-again, off-again meddling in Ukraine.
It thus remains unclear what NATO will do in the long run if Putin not only continues to support the separatists but also conceivably takes even more aggressive action.
Russia’s provocations will be a prime subject of the NATO meeting. The economic sanctions have been executed somewhat gingerly, due to fears the measures could hurt the economies of the West.
Prior to his speech, both Ukraine and Russia cited as erroneous reports that they’d agreed to a ceasefire as Ukraine, the U.S. and Europe says Putin is military supporting pro-Russian separatists. Putin denies that’s the case.
At an earlier press conference, Obama addressed the second beheading of an American journalist by the terrorist ISIS group and warned, “We will not be intimidated. Their horrific acts only unite us as a country and stiffen our resolve to take the fight against these terrorists.”
While talking tough, Obama still shied from saying he’d order aerial strikes on the training camps and other sanctuaries the group uses in Syria.
He said the goal is to make sure that ISIS “is not an ongoing threat to the region.”
That means, he said, that it would be “degraded to the point where it is no longer the kind of factor that we’ve seen it being over the last few months.”
So while again assuring that the U.S. will successfully deal with ISIS, he underscored that its eradication is a long-term process and needs support of both the politically feuding factions in Iraq and neighboring nations.
There was thus not even indirect suggestion he would change his “no boots on the ground” view of Iraq, meaning no U.S. combat troops even as he continues aerial strikes and jacks up the numbers of military personnel protecting U.S. diplomatic personnel in Iraq.
“It is very important from my perspective that when we send our pilots in to do a job, that we know that this is a mission that’s going to work, we’re very clear what our objectives are, what our targets are, we’ve made the case to Congress and we’ve made the case to the American people, and we have allies behind us,” Obama said, “so that it’s not just a one-off.”
That mission would appear to be the shrinking of ISIS influence, if not its total eradication.
With help from a worldwide coalition, he said, “we can continue to shrink ISIL’s sphere of influence, its effectiveness, its financing, its military capabilities to the point where it is a manageable problem,” he said, using another name for the vicious jihadist group.
