Obama national security aides meet to discuss Ukraine

[Gazoo]

By Steve Holland
9 hours ago
 
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama's national security team discussed the Ukraine crisis in a session at theWhite House on Saturday after a last-ditch bid to find a diplomatic solution to the Cold War-style standoff with Russia floundered.

Secretary of State John Kerry, who just returned from talks with his Russian counterpart in London, was at the White House meeting along with Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel.

Obama did not attend the meeting but was being briefed about it and other developments involving Ukraine, said Laura Lucas Magnuson, a spokeswoman for the White House National Security Council.

Crimea's pro-Russia parliament has scheduled a referendum on Sunday to decide whether the region should be annexed by Russia, an ominous development that Obama and his national security team have been trying to head off to no avail.

Obama said on Friday he still hopes a diplomatic solution can be found but that the United States and Europe are prepared to impose "consequences" on Russia if it does not loosen its grip on Crimea.

The Russian move prompted some members of the U.S. Congress to express alarm.

"Russia using provocateurs to provoke violence attacks inside Ukraine to create excuse for invasion of Eastern Ukraine," Republican Florida Senator Marco Rubio said in a Tweet.

Representative Mike Turner, an Ohio Republican who chairs the U.S. delegation to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, said the fresh Russian move was a deliberate violation of Ukraine's sovereignty and "clearly shows that Russia is an aggressor state."

Kerry held talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in London on Friday but they reached no breakthrough in the worst East-West dispute in decades.

http://news.yahoo.com/obama-national-security-aides-meet-discuss-ukraine-192833314.html;_ylt=AwrBJR_fziRT6XYAS5zQtDMD

Fixed it for them...

Obama did not attend the meeting but was being briefed about it and other developments involving Ukraine, on his blackberry on his golf cart  said Laura Lucas Magnuson, a spokeswoman for the White House National Security Council. He will be campaigning this week and is busy planning another much needed vacation.

[EC]

While I have every faith in Kerry and Hagel (you just know they are going to screw it up) I am pleased the Worm was not present. He screws things up in ways that defy all logic, morality and the laws of physics.

[rangerrebew]

Besides those things EC talked about, it does show how little Obama is invested in resolving the situation.