Secretary of State Antony Blinken defended the US messaging about the Russia-Ukraine crisis, saying Monday that “this is not alarmism, this is simply the facts.”
“We have to deal with the facts. We have to deal with the facts in the context of history and we have to deal with the facts in making sure that we are fully prepared,” he said at a news conference at the State Department alongside EU High Representative Josep Borrell.
He said Russia’s massing of troops along the Ukrainian border is “not happening in a vacuum, it’s happening in the context of what Russia already did in 2014 in invading Ukraine, seizing Crimea, creating a conflict in the Donbas that continues to this day.”
Blinken reiterated that the US does not believe Russian President Vladimir Putin has made a decision about whether to invade Ukraine, “but he has put in place the capacity should he so decide to act very quickly against Ukraine and in ways that would have terrible consequences for Ukraine, for Russia, but consequences also for all of us because these actions, this aggression, this threatened aggression against Ukraine would undermine the core principles that were hard established after World War II and after The Cold War that have helped to protect security, stability, peace and prosperity in Europe and beyond ever since.”
Source : Nbcnewyork
