Briefing on the Situation in Ukraine with senior administration officials
Briefing on the Situation in Ukraine
Special Briefing
Office of the Spokesperson
Senior Administration Officials
Via Teleconference
Washington, DC
March 2, 2014
MODERATOR: Good afternoon and thank you, everyone, for joining us today. Before we get started, I just want to remind you that this call is on background. Our speakers today are [name withheld] will be referred to as Senior Administration Official Number One from this point forward. Also with us is [name withheld] who will be referred to as Senior Administration Official Number Two. And we have [name withheld] will be referred to as Senior Administration Official Number Three.
With that, we will go ahead and start with brief remarks from our speakers and then we’ll turn it over to you to take a few questions.
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL ONE: Sure, thanks. I’ll just give a very quick overview of what the President’s been doing. Yesterday, you know he was updated by his national security team and spoke separately with President Putin of Russia, Prime Minister Harper of Canada, and President Hollande of France. Today, the President has spoken with Chancellor Merkel of Germany. He’ll be – he is either speaking now or will be speaking to Prime Minister Cameron of the United Kingdom and President Komorowski of Poland.
The President’s point in all of his calls, frankly, has been to underscore the complete illegitimacy of Russia’s intervention in Crimea, in Ukraine, and to underscore the support of the United States for Ukraine’s territorial integrity and its sovereignty. We can talk through what steps we’re taking on the diplomatic side to make clear that there will be political and economic costs for Russia in terms of its isolation from the international community, as well as the affirmative steps we’re taking to signal our strong support for the people and government of Ukraine, including taking steps towards providing robust economic and technical assistance as well as reassuring them through their participation and consultations in Euro-Atlantic institutions.
With that, I’ll hand it over to my colleague.
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL TWO: Thanks very much. I thought I would quickly go through the ground situation in Ukraine, then talk about the diplomatic strategy that we have both, as Speaker One said, to make it clear that a broad consensus in the international community considers what Russia has done illegitimate, but also to provide an off-ramp, if you will, should Russia be willing to address its concerns in a manner other than with military force, and then also to talk a little bit about our support for Ukraine.
So first to the ground situation, as you will have seen, Russian forces now have complete operational control of the Crimean Peninsula, some 6,000-plus airborne and naval forces with considerable materiel. The Ukrainians, by and large, have stayed in base. In some cases, they’ve actually locked their weapons up. We’ve also had occasional ethnic skirmishes in parts of the east. In particular, we are watching Kharkiv, where there have been efforts to stir up ethnic Russians and Russian citizens in protest to the government. We also have a large Russian military exercise going on on the Russian side of the border to Ukraine’s east. That exercise is due to wrap up in the next couple of days.
Full briefing here:
http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2014/03/222727.htm
= new reply since forum marked as read
