admin
WARSAW. — US Vice President Joe Biden yesterday warned Russia it faced the prospect of more sanctions over its move to absorb Crimea, calling it “nothing more than a land grab”. “Russia’s political and economic isolation will only increase if it continues down this path and it will in fact see additional sanctions by the United States and the EU,” Biden said during a visit to Warsaw, after the Kremlin announced it now considers Crimea a part of Russia.
“Russia has offered a variety of arguments to justify what is nothing more than a land grab,” Biden told reporters after talks on security cooperation with Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk. The Polish leader called Crimea’s “de facto annexation . . . a challenge for the entire free world”.
Britain and Germany strongly condemned Moscow’s inking of a treaty making Crimea a Russian territory, with British Foreign Secretary William Hague saying London was suspending all bilateral military co-operation.
The events in Crimea have rattled nerves in Poland and the three Baltic states, which were under Moscow before the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Biden was in Poland to reassure regional allies as Russia tightened its grip on Ukraine’s breakaway region.
At a press conference with Tusk he condemned what he termed “steps to annex Crimea” by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Biden accused Russia of responding to the democratic aspirations of the Ukrainian people with “a brazen military incursion with the purposeful ratcheting up of ethnic tensions inside Ukraine”.
“With a rushed and illegal referendum in Crimea that was not surprisingly rejected by virtually the entire world. And now today with steps to annex Crimea,” he said. “We’ve joined Poland and the international community in condemning the continuing assault on Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity and the blatant violation of international law by Mr Putin in Russia.”
Biden announced talks in coming weeks with European partners to discuss ways to ease their dependence on Russian natural gas supplies.
Biden also met Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski and Estonia’s President Toomas Hendrik Ilves on Tuesday in Warsaw reassuring these and other ex-communist NATO allies of Washington’s “ironclad” commitment to mutual defence under Article 5.
He heads to Vilnius tomorrow for similar talks with the Latvian and Lithuanian heads of state.
However, Biden will “not discuss any changes to the missile defence strategy in eastern Europe . . . designed to respond to a ballistic missile threat from elsewhere, not Russia,” a senior White House official aboard Air Force One said earlier. — AFP.
Online Reporter