A top US official on Tuesday described President Vladimir Putin’s accusation that Russia has been threatened by the West as justification for attacking Ukraine as “absurd”.
“No one attacked Russia. There is a variety of absurdity in the notion that Russia is in some form of military threat from Ukraine or anyone else,” White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told reporters.
Putin ‘chooses war’
Speaking hours before President Joe Biden gave his own speech in Warsaw to mark the anniversary of Putin launching the war, Sullivan said the Kremlin leader was the aggressor.
“This is a war of choice. Putin chose to fight. He can choose not to. And he can choose now to stop, go home,” Sullivan said.
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“Russia stopped fighting the war in Ukraine and went home, the war ended. Ukraine stopped fighting and the United States and the coalition stopped helping them fight – then Ukraine disappeared from the map,” he said.
Democracy vs autocratic regime
Previewing Biden’s speech, Sullivan said he would not “paint any specifics, any vision of a diplomatic end to the war.”
But he will focus on the broader lessons about Ukraine at what he sees as an “inflection point” in the global struggle between democracy and autocratic regimes.
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“So he said he will talk specifically about the conflict in Ukraine, but of course, he will also talk about the larger contest that exists between the aggressors who are trying to destroy the basic principles and the democracies that they are involved in trying to uphold.”
Biden will deliver his own speech after talks with Polish President Andrzej Duda, who has been a key proponent of support for Ukraine in the EU and NATO and a day after a surprise visit to Kyiv.