Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the U.S. is ready to respond to Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, NBC News reported Sunday.
“What the president made very clear to President Putin, what I’ve been very clear to Foreign Minister [Sergey V.] Lavrov, my counterpart, is that we are looking at and we are prepared to take the kinds of steps we’ve refrained from taking in the past that would have massive consequences for Russia,” Blinken, a 2021 Wash100 Award winner, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday.
According to the report, more than 90,000 Russian troops have been deployed to the Ukrainian border. Blinken noted that the international system’s basic rules are at stake.
“Rules that say that one country can’t change the borders of another by force. One country can’t dictate to another country its choices, its decisions and its foreign policy with whom it will associate, one country can’t exert a sphere of influence over others,” Blinken added.
President Biden on Tuesday held a video call with Russian President Vladimir Putin saying the U.S. and its allies would take strong economic actions and other measures in the event of a Russian invasion of Ukraine.