Blinken on Russian-Ukrainian tension: It’s bigger than a conflict between two countries

US State Secretary Antony Blincken says that the current tension between Russia and Ukraine is  bigger than a conflict between two countries.  

“It’s bigger than Russia and NATO.  It’s a crisis with global consequences, and it requires global attention and action,” Blinken said yesterday. 

Blinken stated that Russia is continuing to escalate its threat toward Ukraine. 

“We’ve seen that again in just the last few days with increasingly bellicose rhetoric, building up its forces on Ukraine’s borders, including now in Belarus.”

He maintained that Russia continues to take aim at NATO, ‘a defensive, voluntary alliance that protects nearly a billion people across Europe and North America’, and at the governing principles of international peace and security ‘that we all have a stake in defending.’ 

He stated that all the former Soviet socialist republics became sovereign nations in 1990 and 1991 and one of them is Georgia. 

“Russia invaded it in 2008.  Thirteen years later, nearly 300,000 Georgians are still displaced from their homes.  Another is Moldova.  Russia maintains troops and munitions there against the will of its people.  If Russia invades and occupies Ukraine, what’s next?  

Certainly, Russia’s efforts to turn its neighbors into puppet states, to control their activities, to crack down on any spark of democratic expression will intensify.  Once the principles of sovereignty and self-determination are thrown out, you revert to a world in which the rules we shaped together over decades erode and then vanish,” he stated.