“We are complacent. And I can not guarantee that as a result of what happened we will shake off this complacency,” he said, adding, however, that he was “encouraged” by how European nations reacted to Russia. ongoing, deadly invasion of Ukraine. Asked if he would have liked to have done more for Russia during his rule, the former president said “conditions were different” when Russia invaded Crimea, in part because European nations were much less interested in intervening. Obama’s comments came on the same day that his former vice president, President Joe Biden, said “major war crimes” had been discovered in Ukraine as Russian forces retreated from areas around Kyiv. Biden cited scenes of violent, cold-blooded executions as the reason for the acceleration of US sanctions on Moscow, including Russia’s largest financial institutions and the two adult daughters of Russian President Vladimir Putin, among many people linked to Kum. Obama spoke Wednesday about his memories of Putin and how he is unsure “that the person I knew is the same person who now leads this class.” “He has always been ruthless. You are witnessing what he did in Chechnya. He had no hesitation in crushing those he considered a threat. This is not new. To bet the farm this way, I would not have predicted five years ago.” Obama said he was aware of speculation that aging and isolation during Covid-19 had changed the Russian leader. Obama said it was “too early to say what a final game looks like” in Ukraine, but that he thought Russia and Putin were surprised by the “degree to which the nature of the war has changed, where everyone sees exactly what “a real-time base is happening” and how this “has the potential to prevent a maximalist victory for Putin”. Obama added: “It’s a tragedy of historical proportions. This is not news to the people here. I think it calls into question a number of trends around the world that we have seen for some time now.” Putin, he said, “represented a very special reaction to the ideals of democracy but also to globalization, to the clash of cultures, to the ability to harness anger and resentment around a nationalist mythology. And what we see are the consequences of this kind of toxic a mixture in the hands of an authoritarian government that does not have much control and balance. “ As for what the US can do in response to Ukraine, Obama said the American people should “support them and their efforts and their courage,” but also “take this as a lesson that they are unfortunately paying the price.” price but this … speaks of a much more uneven, difficult, violent, provocative future for the next generation, if we do not do some things right here at home, in Europe, in Asia, in Latin America.
