The White House studies “several options” including economic sanctions. The American President is supposed to talk soon with Putin, who has massaged tens of thousands of soldiers at the doors of Ukraine in recent weeks.
Le Monde with AFP
Joe Biden said, Friday, December 3, prepare “initiatives” to defend Ukraine in case of invasion, before an exchange with his counterpart Vladimir Putin planned in the coming days.
saying to be in “constant contact” with the allies of the United States and the Ukrainians, the American president declared, from the White House: “I am preparing what will be, I believe, the whole of ‘most comprehensive and relevant initiatives, to make very much, very difficult to Mr. Putin to do what people fear him to do. “
Joe Biden, who answered a question asked after an intervention devoted to the economy, did not give more details. The spokesman for the White House, Jen Psaki, was hardly more likely, indicating: “There is a series of tools at our disposal. Of course, economic sanctions are an option.” She has not not answered a question about possible military actions of Americans.
A biden-Putin interview on the uncertain date
The American president and his Russian counterpart must soon exchange on the crimson around Ukraine, seven years after the Russian annexation of Crimea and the taking of control of a part of the east of the old Soviet Republic by Prerussian separatist forces. But the date and exact modalities of this conversation are not known.
The two men were in person in Geneva last June. But Joe Biden has long concentrated his diplomatic efforts to the rivalry of the United States with China: he had a total of three long exchanges with President Xi Jinping, including a videoconference of several hours on November 15th.
There is no doubt that by massaging tens of thousands of soldiers on the Ukrainian border, as Washington and Kiev, Vladimir Putin regained the attention of his American counterpart.
To soothe tensions, Moscow claims “safe guarantees” and in particular the assurance that NATO will not continue to expand east, especially with an adhesion of Ukraine.
Kiev, for its part, categorically refuses to abandon such a membership project, formally on the table since 2008. Join NATO would mean that the other countries of the Alliance, United States in mind, would be required to intervene militarily to defend Ukraine in case of aggression.
The question of the accession of Ukraine to NATO
Diplomatic exercise is delicate for Joe Biden. The Democrat is certainly the spokesperson for the democracies in front of the authoritarian regimes in the world: it organizes even next week a two-day “summit of” democracies “, an initiative conspired by China and Russia. He also wants to repair the traditional alliances of the United States, undermined by his predecessor Donald Trump.
But on the other hand, the President of the United States, which ended twenty years of military intervention in Afghanistan, no longer wants to hire American troops in large open conflicts. And if it is not stingy with strong statements against Russia, and in particular against Vladimir Putin that he had publicly qualified “killer”, Joe Biden can also be pragmatic. He gave his downstream to a pipeline project in Moscow, but who exasperates Ukraine.
Joe Biden does not hide his impatience for the problems of corruption and governance in Ukraine. Receiving the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House, he had promised to “support the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine in the face of Russian aggression”, but had hardly advanced on the topic burning an adhesion to NATO.