Obama Claims That "There Was No Armed Invasion of Crimea"
Former US President Barack Obama, whose second term fell on Russia's annexation of Crimea and its invasion of Donbas, explained the lack of active support for Kyiv from the West compared to the events of 2022.
According to Obama, Ukraine in 2014 "was not the Ukraine we are talking about today".
"There is a reason why there was not an armed invasion of Crimea. Because Crimea was full of Russian speakers, and there was some sympathy to the view that Russia was representing its interest. The Rada [Ukrainian parliament – ed.] at the time still had a number of Russian sympathisers. The politics inside Ukraine were more complicated," Obama said in an interview with CNN.
«there was no armed invasion of Crimea»
— xena 🌊 (@xenasolo) June 23, 2023
And these are not the Russian soldiers taking over the Crimean parliament in February of 2014, it’s the teenage mutant ninja turtles searching for pizza. https://t.co/kYNDUF2Kca pic.twitter.com/35pakltZxR
The US president also stood up for former German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who has been criticised for rapprochement with Russia and not being tough enough.
"Both myself and also Merkel, whom I give enormous credit for, had to pull in a lot of other Europeans kicking and screaming to impose the sanctions that we did and to prevent Putin from continuing through the Donbas into the rest of Ukraine," he said.
"Given both where Ukraine was at the time and where the European mindset was at the time, we held the line. And part of what happened was, over time, a sense of Ukrainian identity, separate from Russia, and a determination to push back against Russia, and an ability to prepare both militarily and civically to resist Russian pressure [appeared – ed.]," Obama added.
He concluded that the West challenged Putin "with the tools that we had at the time, given where Ukraine was at the time".
The thesis that there was no military invasion of Crimea was repeatedly refuted by Putin himself, who recognised the so-called "green men" – military men without insignia – to be a part of the Russian army.