“We’ve sought to provide possible off-ramps to President Putin. He’s the only one who can decide whether or not to take them. So far, every time there’s been an opportunity to do just that, he’s pressed the accelerator and continued down this horrific road that he’s been pursuing,” Blinken said at a joint news conference with his British counterpart, Liz Truss.
We have! Enlighten us, Tony, seriously. If that is true and if the off ramps were reasonable and did not lead over a cliff, that changes things.
“He has a clear plan right now to brutalize Ukraine but to what end?” Blinken said, adding that Ukrainians have shown that they would not accept any “puppet regime” that Putin might try to install to replace the elected Ukrainian government.
“If he tries to enforce such a puppet regime by keeping Russian forces in Ukraine, it will be a long, bloody, drawn-out mess,” Blinken said.
Senior US defence officials last month assessed that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was designed to “decapitate” Ukraine’s government.
