| Translate This News In |
|---|
On Thursday, US President Joe Biden said that the days of his country rolling over in the face of the aggressive actions of Russia are over and warned Moscow that his administration will not hesitate to raise the cost of it.
“I made it clear to President Putin, in a manner very different from my predecessor, that the days of the United States rolling over in the face of Russia’s aggressive actions — interfering with our elections, cyberattacks, poisoning its citizens — are over,” Biden told staff at the State Department.
Biden said Alexei Navalny’s politically motivated imprisonment and Russia’s efforts to suppress freedom of speech and peaceful assemblies are a matter of profound concern to the United States and the international community.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke on Thursday over the phone with his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, during which they discussed the extension of the New START and the need for new weapons control to address all of Russia’s nuclear weapons and China’s growing threat.
“This includes the release of Paul Whelan and Trevor Reed so that they are able to return home to their families in the United States. The secretary raised Russian interference in the 2020 US election, its military aggression in Ukraine and Georgia, the poisoning of Alexei Navalny and the SolarWinds incident, among other issues,” said State Department Spokesperson Ned Price.
“It includes interference with American democracy. It includes poisoning citizens on European soil with chemical weapons. It includes the types of hacks and violations you’ve just mentioned, and many other things. We’ll do that at a time and in the way we choose.And we believe that imposing these costs and consequences will have an impact on Russia’s future behaviour.
Sullivan reiterated at the same time that it does not rule out being able to work with Russia where it is in the interest of the US to do so.
In the meantime, Senator Jeanne Shaheen, a senior member of the Senate Committee on Armed Services and Foreign Relations, introduced a resolution with Senators Chris Coons, Marco Rubio and Dick Durbin calling for widespread cooperation between Congress and the Biden administration to formulate a strategy to counter Russian proxies’ malicious activities.
