President Obama was very careful to distance himself from Ukraine’s latest allegations of a Russian invasion, saying that there was “not really a shift” in Russia’s policy toward Ukraine, despite this morning’s claims of thousands of Russian troops in the east.
The allegations were seized upon by some officials, but Ukraine’s increasingly hysterical, and often untrue, allegations have the president a bit gun-shy about putting his name to the invasion, and there isn’t exactly evidence to back up what Kiev is saying.
Still, Obama is not one to let a crisis go unexploited, even a likely imaginary one, and he is promising to impose yet more sanctions against the Russians, insisting Russia brought the moves on themselves by opposing Ukraine’s crackdown on eastern secessionists.
The “invasion,” which US media outlets were reporting as absolute fact, was never explicitly mentioned by President Obama, but was clearly the pretext for the latest round of sanctions.
