President Biden’s admission that Western allies are not entirely united on how they would respond to a “minor” Russian incursion into Ukraine has sparked an uproar in Kiev.
They were also met with concern in Europe, where officials and observers said Biden’s candid remarks had turned a spotlight on an uncomfortable truth at a dangerous moment.
Foreign diplomats and experts said Biden’s comments were also an acknowledgment of a harsh reality: as tensions rise on the Ukrainian border, NATO allies are not all on the same page.
There is “some truth there, which didn’t need to be said out loud,” one NATO diplomat told CNN Thursday. “It’s not like the Russians didn’t know that, say, a cyber-attack against Ukraine wouldn’t trigger a full-scale response.”
This sentiment was echoed by a senior EU diplomat who said, “I think he was actually quite truthful in what he said. Whether it was politically OK, I don’t know.”
The fear is that Biden saying this publicly will give Russian President Vladimir Putin the green light to escalate what is already a very dangerous situation. Biden said in the same answer that he predicts Russia will “move in” to Ukraine, which warned earlier this week that the build-up of Russian troops near the border between the two nations was “almost completed.”
The NATO diplomat who spoke to CNN said that there is a “lack of clarity” over what the specific response would be from NATO allies to specific Russian actions.
“There aren’t yet staked out positions,” the diplomat explained, but said it would probably “break out on the lines you would expect — US, UK, Canada, Denmark, Norway, Easterners would have a low-trigger threshold, everyone else a higher one.”
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