Secretary of State John Kerry on Sunday sharply criticized Russian President Vladimir Putin for his decision to send troops into Crimea, a part of Ukraine strategically important to Russia.
“It’s really 19th century behavior in the twenty-first century,” Kerry said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “You just don’t invade another country on phony pretexts in order to assert your interests.”
Kerry said that Putin is “possibly trying to annex Crimea,” but that he will not succeed.
“He’s going to lose on the international stage, Russia is going to lose, the Russian people are going to lose, and he’s going to lose all of the glow that came out of the Olympics, his $60 billion extravaganza,” Kerry said, adding that other world leaders are also determined to stop Putin form interfering in Ukraine.
“There’s a unified view by all of the foreign ministers I talked with yesterday – all of the G-8 and more — that they’re simply going to isolate Russia; that they’re not going to engage with Russia in a normal business-as-usual manner…. The ruble is already going down and feeling the impact of this.”
