Russia’s interest in Ukraine is for “short-term gain,” and its troops remain massed along the Ukrainian border, US Pentagon chief Chuck Hagel said in an interview that aired on Sunday.
Speaking on ABC’s This Week Hagel qualified Russia as an “adversary in Ukraine,” but stopped short of calling it an enemy. “I think that is simplistic to get into either enemy, friend, partner, so on,” he said in an interview taped on Saturday. “Russia continues to isolate itself for a short-term gain. They, the Russians, may feel that somehow they’re winning. But the world is not about just short term,” he said.