June 12, 2015

Carter on Russian aggression in Ukraine

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WASHINGTON – The United States needs to take new steps to respond to the Ukraine conflict because economic sanctions and other Western actions have failed to get Russian President Vladimir Putin to reverse course, Defense Secretary Ash Carter said June 5. Speaking after conferring with U.S. diplomats and military officers in Stuttgart, Germany, Mr. Carter said the Pentagon was concerned about “further things happening” after the worst upsurge in fighting in months broke out this week in eastern Ukraine. “What’s clear is that sanctions are working on the Russian economy,” causing considerable hardship for ordinary Russians and a deep recession this year, Mr. Carter told reporters on his plane back to Washington. “What is not apparent is that that effect on his economy is deterring Putin from following the course that was evidenced in Crimea last year,” when Moscow annexed the Ukrainian territory, he said. “It’s a sign of how heedless the Russian government seems to be about the long-term welfare of its own people that [the sanctions have] not yet resulted in a change, in a reversal… of course, which is what we want out of Russia,” he said. But it means NATO needs to rethink its strategy, Secretary Carter said. “There are other things we need to be doing in recognition of the fact that… Putin does not seem to be reversing course.” U.S. officials said no decisions were made during the Stuttgart meeting, but one action discussed was boosting the number of U.S. and NATO military training exercises. Another was to invest in military capabilities in Europe that could help NATO respond to the kind of asymmetric warfare used in Ukraine, where forces in unidentified uniforms – so-called little green men – joined the conflict. Agence France-Presse reported that Mr. Carter and other U.S. officials in Stuttgart also discussed bolstering U.S. missile defenses, or even deploying land-based missiles in Europe, in response to Russia’s alleged violation of a nuclear arms treaty. (RFE/RL, based on reporting by Reuters, the Associated Press and Agence France-Presse)

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