Obama Vows Russia Penalties, but Avoids Calling Ukraine Advance an Invasion

President Obama condemned the latest Russian military advance into Ukraine on Thursday and said the United States and its allies would take further actions to punish Moscow for violating its neighbor’s sovereignty, but he stopped short of calling it an invasion.“My expectation is we will take additional steps primarily because we have not seen any meaningful action on the part of Russia to try to resolve this in a diplomatic fashion,” he told reporters in a news conference at the White House. “The sanctions that we’ve already applied have been effective. Our intelligence shows the Russians know they’ve been effective.”

Grappling with multiple international crises, Mr. Obama also cautioned against expecting imminent American military strikes inside Syria targeting forces of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, which has established a virtual state across the border of those two countries.

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The president said he wanted to build a formidable international coalition before taking any action, and he made it clear that he was not close to settling on an approach.

“We don’t have a strategy yet,” he said, before heading into a meeting with his national security advisers to discuss the situation there. “Folks are getting a little further ahead of where we’re at.”

The president’s comments came at a time of heightened international tension that has consumed much of his time and attention, but the underlying message he seemed intent on sending was to urge caution in tackling them. He argued that there was no military solution to the crisis with ISIS or the confrontation with Russia.

He used the occasion to chastise regional allies in the Middle East for playing both sides when it comes to extremist groups like ISIS, and he said he was sending Secretary of State John Kerry to the region to assemble a consensus approach for rolling back the organization’s gains. He also said that he had just spoken with Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany about Russia and had invited Ukraine’s new president, Petro O. Poroshenko, to visit him in Washington.

Mr. Obama declined to call the latest reports of Russian military units moving into Ukraine an invasion, as others have, saying they are “not really a shift” but “a little more overt” version of longstanding violations of Ukrainian sovereignty. “I consider the actions that we’ve seen in the last week a continuation of what’s been taking place for months now,” he said. “These separatists are backed, trained, armed, financed by Russia. Throughout this process we’ve seen deep Russian involvement in everything that they’ve done.”

Mr. Obama’s tone was strikingly more restrained than that of his ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, who earlier in the day bluntly accused Russia of lying about its military intervention in Ukraine. In a blistering statement to the Security Council, Ms. Power said “the mask is coming off” Russia’s actions, which she called “a threat to all of our peace and security.”

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The Russian escalation came even as Mr. Obama prepared to travel to Europe next week to meet with NATO allies and reassure the Baltic States that the United States would stand by them in case of aggression from Moscow. While Mr. Obama has been reluctant to send substantial American forces to NATO allies in Eastern Europe, NATO now plans to create a “spearhead” rapid deployment force and a “more visible” presence in the region.

But Mr. Obama ruled out the prospect of direct involvement in Ukraine. “We are not taking military action to solve the Ukrainian problem,” he said. “What we’re doing is to mobilize the international community to apply pressure on them. I think it is very important to recognize that a military solution to this problem is not going to be forthcoming.”

He likewise stressed the need for a political approach to ISIS on top of any military action. As American warplanes continued to strike ISIS targets inside Iraq, he acknowledged that the group had carved out “a safe haven” in Syria. Nonetheless, any decision to extend military action into Syria must be “part of a broader comprehensive strategy,” he said.

“My priority at this point is to make sure that the gains that ISIL made in Iraq are rolled back and that Iraq has the opportunity to govern itself effectively and secure itself,” he said, using an alternative term for ISIS.

“Clearly ISIL has come to represent the very worst elements in the region that we have to deal with collectively,” he added. “That’s going to be a long-term project. It’s going to require us to stabilize Syria in some fashion.”

He rejected the notion raised by many political leaders and analysts that strikes inside Syria would have the effect of helping President Bashar al-Assad in his brutal and long-running civil war against ISIS and other Syrian rebel groups.

“I don’t think this is a situation where we have to choose,” Mr. Obama said. “We have to give people inside Syria a choice other than ISIL or Assad. I don’t see any scenario in which Assad is able to bring peace and stability” to his country.

The president said he is consulting with Congress about possible action in Syria but added that it was premature to discuss the possible legal justification of any strikes there since he does not know yet what he plans to do. “I don’t want to put the cart before the horse,” he said.