The NPR Politics Podcast - US Responds To Russian Invasion Of Ukraine With Stronger Sanctions

Episode Date: February 24, 2022

In a speech at the White House Thursday afternoon, President Biden reiterated that the United States would not deploy troops to Ukraine, though he did bolster troop presence in neighboring countries. The economic impact of the invasion and subsequent sanctions will take time to determine. This episode: congressional correspondent Susan Davis, White House correspondent Franco Ordoñez, and international correspondent Jackie Northam.Connect:Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Find and support your local public radio station.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. It is 2.34 p.m. on Thursday, February 24th. I'm Susan Davis. I cover Congress. I'm Frank O'Donoghue as I cover the White House. And international affairs correspondent Jackie Northam is also here. Hey, Jackie. Hi. So Russia has begun its invasion of Ukraine. President Joe Biden addressed the nation this afternoon. The Russian military has begun a brutal assault on the people of Ukraine. President Joe Biden addressed the nation this afternoon. The Russian military has begun a brutal assault on the people of Ukraine

without provocation, without justification, without necessity. This is a premeditated attack. Vladimir Putin ignored months of warnings from the U.S., Europe, and allies around the world that an invasion will provoke severe consequences for Russia and its people. Putin is the aggressor. Putin chose this war. And now he and his country will bear the consequences. Jackie, before we get into everything that the president said today, can you just take a step back for a minute and provide some context to how significant this move is by Vladimir Putin. It's very significant. You know, this is shaping up to be the largest war on European soil since the end of World War II.

You know, it's about one country, an autocracy with a very powerful military, simply trying to seize control of another country, a democratic Western country. And the worry is that if Russia manages to seize Ukraine, what's stopping it from trying to move onwards to other countries, NATO countries, the Baltic states, which sit next to Ukraine, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia. These are small nations, and there's really nothing to stop Russian President Vladimir Putin from just keep moving the troops forward. So this is more than just an invasion of Ukraine. It's really, it's also a challenge by Putin to NATO countries, and that includes the U.S. So, Franco, with all that in mind, what did Biden say today about how the U.S. is going to respond to this?

You know, President Biden responded saying that aggression cannot go unanswered. He says America stands up to bullies. America needs to stand up for freedom. And just to give some of the specifics, President Biden said he would sanction four additional Russian banks with more than $1 trillion in assets from the U.S. financial system. And he specifically named VTB, which is the country's second largest bank. The actions would also target some key technology exports to Russia, including semiconductors, which the president says would have a dramatic impact on the military and Russia's ability to invest in its military. And he did just come out of the meeting with G7 leaders, and he says they're all on the same page.

We're in full and total agreement. We will limit Russia's ability to do business in dollars, euros, pounds, and yen to be part of the global economy. He did repeat that the U.S. troops would not fight in Ukraine, but he said he was prepared to move more troops to Germany and other NATO ally regions in order to support the NATO alliance in the event that this invasion or the crisis kind of spills over outside of Ukraine. He also made a little bit of news. He announced tomorrow there will be a 30 nation NATO summit. Is there any sense what they expect to get out of this? And more broadly,

it seems like Putin in his advances was trying to sort of threaten the NATO alliance. And that doesn't seem to have worked out very well. If anything, we're seeing global leaders from around the world speaking really in one voice today. Yeah, I do think that you are seeing kind of unity among NATO allies in a way that you have not seen it in many years, particularly in the Trump years, when, you know, our listeners will remember that the United States under Trump was basically attacking NATO and questioning its importance. This crisis has really kind of brought NATO together and kind of given it a new sense of energy and purpose. And it's a big deal that the 30 members are all kind of looking forward together on this issue.

And on Friday, they're going to have a virtual summit to kind of discuss the way forward following Russia's attack on Ukraine. We obviously don't know how far Vladimir Putin is willing to take this, but this is how President Biden described what he believes Putin's ambitions are. He has much larger ambitions in Ukraine. He wants to, in fact, reestablish the former Soviet Union. That's what this is about. And I think that his ambitions are completely contrary to the place where the rest of the world has arrived. Jackie, reestablishing the Soviet Union seems like a pretty big deal to me. Well, yes, it certainly would be.

And it's also unrealistic as well. The world has moved on since the early 90s. Communism really doesn't exist in large parts of the world right now. Russia is no longer closed off. It's got the internet, it's got social media, it's got everything like that. It's interesting what's driving this. If you think about Vladimir Putin, when the Soviet Union broke up, he was a young intelligence officer and it's always stuck with him that this was a huge disgrace

for Russia to have this happen. And it's almost like he's carried around sort of this huge chip on his shoulder for decades that he wanted to right this wrong. And now, you know, analysts say that, you know, he's watching. The U.S. is not quite as strong or it's as distracted more than it was. There's other things that he just he's got a

much more powerful military now than he did even a decade ago. And now was the right time to try it. But, you know, you listen to him talk and his justifications and that it seems almost delusional. And, you know, President Biden has kind of alluded to that in a few of the statements that he's made. So, you know, no, I don't think, you know, I think the rest of the world will try to stand up if he if President Putin just keeps this machine moving forward. Franco, there was an interesting moment at the press conference today where a reporter asked the president, where's China in all of this? And Biden basically said, no comment. I don't have anything for you on that right now. How do you interpret that answer? Where is China here? Yeah, it's a

difficult question. I mean, part of it may be kind of like the history of the administration and that issue. I mean, there is some complicating factors between Russia and China. Obviously, China is kind of the, you know, the buddy that Russia has now. So any kind of actions that United States or its allies take on Russia could potentially push Russia even closer to China. And there is concern about a stronger alliance between Russia and China. Yeah. focus more on China. So, I mean, I'm not positive, but those things could be in the back of his mind when he's saying those things. It's, you know, it's difficult to get in the head of a president some days. China is on the same page as Russia in a couple, in one sense, is that it doesn't like the idea of a NATO expansion of this large sort of westernized collective military force. And also, China does not like sanctions.

It's never liked sanctions. And it would never go, you know, the chances of it going along with the sanctions regime is just not on the tables. Even against North Korea, it wouldn't go with that. So that might play into this whole thing as well, where the U.S. and China are not seeing eye to eye on this at all. All right, well, let's take a quick break.

And when we get back, we'll talk more about sanctions in a second. And we're back and we've been talking about sanctions. And I think a question that came up at the White House press conference today and remains an open question is, how much damage can sanctions really do? You know, Russia has already faced any number of US imposed sanctions in recent years for its bad behavior. They didn't seem to be much of a deterrent then. The threat of sanctions did not deter Vladimir Putin from going into Ukraine. Do you have a sense of how much impact they will actually have on Russia, its oligarchs and its people? You know, the earlier sanctions on Russia were fairly limited.

They went after a few oligarchs and that and some small businesses. This is a whole different ballgame, what the U.S. and the allies are putting together here. You know, what they're trying to do is they are trying to choke Russia's economy. You know, people think, ah, sanctions, boom, that's it. We're going to see something happen right away. This is going to take time. You know, already today you saw some executives of major companies in Russia meet with Putin and they said nervously, as you can imagine, we have to protect

the Russian economy here and these sanctions will affect the Russian economy. Already today, you know, the stock market in Russia tanked one third. So it will take time. And the thing is, what's going to happen that Biden was alluding to that he wants to see is that people in Russia will rise up because this will hurt them. And that Putin is going to have to decide whether he wants a second rate power, you know, where he has to keep his people down, or he's going to respond to the sanctions and roll back this aggression. Is there a risk of reverse sanctions? In other words, does Putin have sort of equal sanctions he could impose not just on the U.S.,

but on European allies who have a much closer sort of economic and trade relationship with Russia? Not necessarily. I mean, you know, really Russia doesn't, it's not a manufacturing state, you know, a great manufacturing state. It's an oil and gas state is what it is. So if Putin wanted to retaliate on something like this, certainly he could cut off gas to Europe. And that's what Europe relies on gas from Russia. But at the same time,

Russia relies on the revenues from those sales to Europe as well. It helps build up the Kremlin's coffers, so to speak. If you want to retaliate, of course, there's cyber Europe as well. It helps build up, you know, the Kremlin's coffers, so to speak. You know, if you want to retaliate, of course, there's cyber attacks as well. So there are things certainly that Putin could do, but it's not like he can withhold semiconductors from the U.S. It's just not, you know, they're on two different playing fields. Sue, can I ask you about the temperature on the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue? I mean, what has been the response from Capitol Hill?

On the whole, I think there's been a lot of unity behind action from the U.S., especially these sanctions. He has the support on Capitol Hill. There has been some said that the president's actions back in Afghanistan set up a moment that lets the world's autocrats think that they can advance and make these kind of incursions. But I think in the short term, if the things that the president might ask Congress to do, he probably has some goodwill and bipartisan support on this front. Things like if they need any legislation passed to enact more sanctions, it seems almost certainly likely that he's going to ask for more military aid to provide to the Ukrainian military, to prop up the government and the military there. So in the short term, I think you're going to see some bipartisan unity. But if this stretches on and on and on, obviously, I think that there are some risks here for the president to be able to maintain that kind of unity. Because one of the things I'm thinking about, Franco, and he referenced this today at the, noting that the Americans may have to have some

sacrifices, and he was referring to energy payments. But he said it's important for the United States to stand up to its principles. I will note, though, that he says that the United States is looking into ways to kind of address kind of energy markets and kind of address how to reduce prices or at least mitigate any rises, tapping into the strategic patrolling reserves. That is one way to do that. But there are other consequences that are of concern to the United States. I mean, Jake Sullivan, the National Security Advisor, has talked about the possibility of this spillover of the crisis of the violence of the invasion. And the United States has said a few times that, you know, they have seen wars expand, wars grow.

And that means they need to be careful and they need to watch out for those things. All right. Let's leave it there for today. Jackie, as always, thank you. Thank you very much. I'm Susan Davis. I cover Congress. I'm Frank Ordonez. I cover the White House. And thanks for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.