Quote:A Fox News reporter badgered White House press secretary Jen Psaki on Friday regarding Russian sanctions regarding Ukraine, claiming that the Biden administration is “waiting for people to die” first.

Correspondent Jacqui Heinrich challenged Psaki on why President Joe Biden appears to be reluctant to impose sanctions on the Kremlin as Russian forces continue to surround Ukraine and move more military assets into regions on Ukraine’s border ahead of what many within the administration believe is an imminent attack.

“Heinrich asked why, despite Russian President Vladimir Putin’s continued posturing along Russia’s border with Ukraine and intelligence suggesting an imminent attack, the Biden Administration was still holding back on the threatened sanctions that were supposedly being used as a ‘deterrent,'” The Daily Wire reported.

“You guys have attributed this cyber attack to Russia and you’re warning that the prospect of war — or peace, rather, is pretty dim. So, at what point do you break away from the strategy, say it’s not working, and do something else, imposing these sanctions now?” Heinrich asked after noting that proposed sanctions did not apply to various avenues in order to minimize the collateral damage to other nations.

Psaki pushed back, however, and said the administration looks at the proposed sanctions as deterrents and added that the White House believes that the threat of sanctions gives leverage rather than actually imposing them.

“If you put all of the sanctions in place now, what is stopping them from invading?” Psaki asked.

“Are they working?” Heinrich asked in response.

“Well … I think that’s our assessment from the national security team and, you know, we will continue to implement that strategy,” Psaki replied.

That didn’t satisfy Heinrich, however.

“You’re waiting for people to die before implementing them in that case,” Heinrich pressed once more.

“I think, Jacqui, that’s in no way a fair statement or accusation, I guess, if that’s what that is,” Psaki responded.

“What we have done, what the president has done is unite hundreds — countries around the world on a strong package that will be crippling to the Russian economy and we have done that in a way where we have stood up for the territorial integrity of Ukraine and stood with our NATO partners and allies,” she said.

“It has always been up to President Putin and Russia to determine which path they were going to take, that has not changed,” Psaki continued. “But that leadership on the world stage is what has led to a united front and united opposition to these actions.”

The press secretary also said that Putin had thus far failed to achieve one of his long-held objectives, the permanent division of NATO as well as undermining relations between alliance countries.

Last month, Secretary of State Antony Blinken got the same line of questioning from CNN’s Dana Bash and he gave nearly the same response that Psaki gave Heinrich.

“Ukrainian President Zelensky is calling for the U.S. and others, Europeans, to put sanctions in place now, to do it proactively, not reactively. He said, quote, ‘Today our partners are saying that war may start tomorrow if there was a powerful escalation on the Russian side and then there will be powerful sanctions applied.’ The question is why are you not introducing sanctions now rather than waiting until after the escalation. What’s your answer to that?” Bash asked.

“First of all, Dana, as I said, we are not waiting. We are doing a lot right now,” Blinken insisted, saying that the United States was “taking the lead” on coordinating what he said would be “massive consequences” that would be implemented if Russia were to make a move against Ukraine in the coming days or weeks.

“In Ukraine we’re providing — and last year alone provided more military assistance to Ukraine than any year in the past. We’ve been going against those inside Ukraine trying to destabilize the government. We’re taking concrete action,” Blinken added.

“But you’re not imposing the sanctions?” pressure Bash.

“When it comes to sanctions, the purpose of those sanctions is to deter Russian aggression. So if they’re triggered now, you lose the deterrent effect,” Blinken argued, noting that coordination between the U.S. and European countries was “designed to factor into President Putin’s calculus and deter and dissuade them from taking aggressive action even as we pursue diplomacy at the same time.”

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Joe Biden's Ukraine Strategy Is Much Worse Than Originally Thought

Quote:For almost a month now, the Biden administration has been insisting a Russian invasion of Ukraine is imminent. That projection was re-upped on Friday when the president held a presser in which he asserted that Vladimir Putin had already made the decision to launch an attack and that it would happen in the “coming days.”

The date of the supposed invasion of Ukraine has changed several times now, showing the limits of foreign intelligence and raising questions about what exactly the administration’s strategy is. What is to be gained by continually trying to publicly “predict” when Putin will make his move? And even then, Biden and his cohorts have been wrong so many times in the last month that their assertions just come across as guesses.

To this point, I’ve assumed that the goal, naive as it may be, was to place Putin in the position of proving the United States right if he invades. The thought behind such a strategy would be to challenge the Russian leader’s ego, so that he’d choose to not invade just to be able to claim the West overreacted.

To be clear, that’s a really dumb strategy with little chance of success, but as it turns out, Biden’s actual strategy is even worse than originally thought. Instead of playing mind games with Putin to deter an invasion, according to Biden, the monthlong predictions of a coming invasion are simply meant to…assign blame?

Does the president really think Russia cares about being blamed for starting a war in Ukraine? Everyone already knows Russia is to blame for the current crisis, and Putin is far too calculating to be affected by what Denmark and France think. This is akin to the administration releasing sternly worded letters to the Taliban warning them they’ll be ostracized from the international community if they don’t stop terrorizing people. Why the heck would the Taliban care about that?

Here, I thought maybe, just maybe, Biden might have some actual plan working behind the scenes, but as it turns out, he’s just practicing more hashtag diplomacy. A despot like Putin is not deterred by finger-wagging from Western nations. It certainly didn’t deter him when he invaded Georgia in 2008 or when he moved into Ukraine’s Crimea region in 2014. It is incredibly dumb to think such a move would work today, especially when the United States and NATO have only weakened further.

But don’t take my word for it, though. Do you know who else thinks Biden’s strategy makes absolutely no sense? The Ukrainians. You know, the country that Russia is threatening to invade.

Zalensky’s critique is spot on. If a Russian invasion is a foregone conclusion, something Biden himself has said, then why are the Western powers not moving to enact sanctions now? What good is it going to do to sanction Russia once they’ve seized the oil-producing regions in the north and started the march toward Kyiv? At that point, the genie is out of the bottle, and Putin is not going to back down over threats of possible financial hardship.

The time to use the leverage the West has over Russia is before thousands of people die, not after it’s too late to matter. Biden’s feckless strategy of just virtue signaling about blame only makes an invasion more likely because it signals to Putin that the United States is weak and unwilling to take real action. Ukraine’s leadership is smart enough to see that. Why isn’t Joe Biden?

Slo jo biden will continue wagging the dog until he can claim to have defeated both wuflu and Russia through “diplomacy”. I truly pity the people who “voted” for this fool since most of them are probably dead.

https://twitter.com/brodie954/status/149...4405378048

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