Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby doubled down on the Biden administration’s strategy of using the threat of sanctions as a deterrent and rejected increased calls for imposing pre-invasion sanctions, saying, “[Russian President Vladimir Putin] has not conducted another invasion in Ukraine yet, and we still think there’s time to prevent that.”
“It’s supposed to be a deterrent. If you punish somebody for something they haven’t done yet, then they might as well just go ahead and do it,” Kirby added. “And we’re hoping that that could affect the calculous of Mr. Putin.”
Kirby said on Fox News Sunday that Putin still has many options on the table if he chooses to take a diplomatic off-ramp to the tensions, saying, “We have made serious proposals and talked about changing, for instance, the scope and scale of some of our exercises in Europe, being willing to talk about offensive missile capabilities in Europe. We have certainly put forward other proposals to try to convince Mr. Putin that we’re serious.”
Kirby made clear the issue of Ukraine’s membership in NATO, however, is “an issue for Ukraine and for NATO. That is not something that Mr. Putin can simply institute a veto over or decide for himself, that kind of thing is again between the alliance and Ukraine.”
Some context: Kirby would not address individual claims made by Putin, but he characterized them as “outrageous claims” and said, on the whole, “these are just not credible.”
He said that Putin is “playing the victim,” which he said is exactly out of the “Russian playbook.”
“It is absolutely right out of the Russian playbook. He may be moving Xs and Os around the field right now militarily, but it seems like he’s using the same old playbook,” Kirby said, adding, “And I don’t want to make light of this analogy. This isn’t a football game. This is potentially war and lives are at stake here.”
