The president has threatened tougher steps for further provocation, preserving the potency of sanctions as a deterrent
Numerologists will be fascinated that Joe Biden began his Ukraine speech on Tuesday at 2.22pm on 22.2.22. The US president, however, was more concerned with his own calculation of the economic and political costs of overreacting – or underreacting – to Russia’s provocations.
Biden thought he would be remembered as the pandemic president, but finds himself commanding the arsenal of democracy in what could become the biggest military assault in Europe since the second world war. The crisis escalated on Monday after Vladimir Putin recognised two breakaway territories in eastern Ukraine as independent entities, an apparent pretext for invasion.