The United States has threatened Russia with the possibility of sanctions including asset freezes and visa bans if it does not pull out its forces from Ukraine even as reports spoke of Moscow assuming full operational control of the Crimean peninsula.
President Barack Obama, under mounting pressure from Republicans to match his rhetoric with action, is dispatching Secretary of State John Kerry to the Ukrainian capital of Kiev on Tuesday in a show of solidarity with the new government and ramp up diplomatic pressure on the Vladimir Putin regime.
In a flurry of statements, US officials have also indicated the possibility of Russia being ejected from the Group of Eight (G8), the club of top industrial nations. As Kerry himself put it, “If Russia wants to be a G8 country, it needs to behave like a G8 country.”
“All options are on the table,” Kerry said in a series of TV interviews. “You just don’t in the 21st century behave in 19th century fashion by invading another country on completely trumped-up pretext,” a fuming Kerry told CBS News on Sunday and made similar strong comments on other networks.
However, when asked if Obama was considering military action as well against Russia, Kerry said the US and its allies hope they can avoid such action as nobody wants the standoff to escalate into a military confrontation.
“Right now, I think we are focused on political, diplomatic and economic options,” a senior US official later told reporters, virtually discounting the possibility of any American military offensive for now. “Frankly our goal is to uphold the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Ukraine, not to have a military escalation,” the official added.
Kerry’s visit to Kiev is intended to “reaffirm United States’ strong support for Ukrainian sovereignty, independence, territorial integrity, and the right of the Ukrainian people to determine their own future, without outside interference or provocation,” the State Department said in a statement.