Former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Tuesday that the U.S. must do more to encourage energy independence in Europe to guard against further aggression by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“What Putin did is illegal; it is against international law,” Clinton said during a speech in Montreal a short time after Putin signed treaties with Crimea’s Moscow-backed leaders appropriating the region, including its naval port of Sevastopol, after a weekend referendum.
“This is a clash of values, and it’s an effort by Putin to rewrite the boundaries of post-World War II Europe. And if he’s allowed to get away with that, then I think you’ll see a lot of other countries either directly facing Russian aggression or suborned with their political systems — so they’re so intimidated that, in effect, they are transformed into vassals, not sovereign democracies.”
Speaking before the Board of Trade of Metropolitan Montreal, Clinton said the U.S. and Canada must work closely as they prepare for Putin’s next phase, which she predicted would be “a lot of probing and testing.”
http://www.latimes.com/nation/politics/politicsnow/la-pn-hillary-clinton-russia-crimea-20140318,0,1830133.story#ixzz2wOhi4v79
