Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Sunday the U.S. and its allies need to “double down” in sanctioning Russian President Vladimir Putin, signaling his invasion of Ukraine is a wake-up call for the West after her attempt to reset relations with Russia under President Obama failed to change Moscow’s behavior.
“The only way that we’re going to end the bloodshed and the terror that we’re seeing unleashed in Ukraine, and protect Europe and democracy, is to do everything we can to impose even greater costs on Putin. There are more banks that can be sanctioned,” Mrs. Clinton told NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “So I think that now is the time to double down on the pressure.”
“We are really looking at this with our eyes wide open and seeing very clearly the threat he poses — not just to Ukraine, as we can watch every night on our news — but really to Europe, to democracy and the global stability that we thought we were building in the last 20 years,” she said.
Mrs. Clinton, the 2020 Democratic presidential nominee and secretary of state from 2009 to 2013, tried to improve relations with Russia, though it proved fruitless.
The Obama administration held meetings with a big red reset button and revived nuclear cooperation agreements while supporting a version of Silicon Valley in Russia known as Skolkovo, leading critics to charge that the Kremlin would weaponize new technologies.
Instead of improving things, Mr. Putin sparred with Mrs. Clinton over her support for Ukraine’s turn to the West.
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Mr. Putin later annexed Ukraine’s Crimea Peninsula, resulting in Russia’s expulsion from the Group of Eight nations, which is now the G7, and his country was accused of meddling in Mrs. Clinton’s presidential contest against former President Donald Trump.
Today, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has accused Mr. Putin of war crimes, citing in part brutal footage from the city of Bucha in which people appeared to be shot with their hands tied.
Mr. Putin has said he plans to attend the broader Group of 20 summit in Indonesia later this year despite his brutal invasion.
Mrs. Clinton said other leaders should boycott the G-20 if Mr. Putin shows up.
“I would not allow Russia back into the organizations that it has been a part of. I think that there’s an upcoming G-20 event later in the year. I would not permit Russia to attend, and if they insisted on literally showing up, I would hope there would be a significant if not total boycott,” she told NBC.
• Tom Howell Jr. can be reached at thowell@washingtontimes.com.
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