UKRAINE-CRISIS/BUSH-GERMANY Putin is a "bully", U.S. needs to respond resolutely - Jeb Bush

Record ID: 150773

  • Title: UKRAINE-CRISIS/BUSH-GERMANY Putin is a "bully", U.S. needs to respond resolutely - Jeb Bush
  • Date: 10th June 2015
  • Summary: BERLIN, GERMANY (JUNE 10, 2015) (REUTERS) EXTERIOR OF HOTEL FORMER FLORIDA GOVERNOR, JEB BUSH, WALKING OUT OF HOTEL, PICKING UP BOTTLE AND HANDING IT TO REPORTER CAMERAMAN (SOUNDBITE) (English) FORMER FLORIDA GOVERNOR, JEB BUSH, SAYING: "He's all powerful in Russia but I guess my point was that we don't want to make it sound like we're against Russia. Ultimately Russia nee
  • Embargoed: 25th June 2015 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Germany
  • Country: Germany
  • Topics: General
  • Reuters ID: LVA7GS62XBX8NZWOBPDIZSNQVD3E
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text: Likely Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush said on Wednesday (June 10) that Russian President Vladimir Putin was a "bully" and the United States and its allies in Europe should be resolute in responding to Russian aggression.
    Bush, the brother of former U.S. President George W. Bush, is on a five-day tour of Europe in a bid to prove his foreign policy credentials before he is expected to launch his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination next week. After leaving Berlin he will visit Poland and Estonia.
    "Ultimately I think to deal with Putin you need to deal from strength - he's a bully and ... you enable bad behaviour when you're nuanced with a guy like that," Bush, the former governor of Florida, told reporters in Berlin.
    "And I think just being clear - I'm not talking about being bellicose - but saying 'here are the consequences of your actions', and that would deter the kind of bad outcome we don't want to see," he added.
    Bush said signalling what further sanctions Russia could face and providing assurances to Poland and the Baltic states that the U.S. would meet its obligations regarding Article 5 of NATO's treaty - a mutual defense clause that says an attack on one member state is considered an attack against the alliance as a whole - could help halt Putin's aggression towards Ukraine.
    "If he believes that we're not serious, then I think it increases the possibility that he'll take further action. If he thinks that we're resolute I think that that's the greatest possibility of restricting any kind of further aggressions."
    Putin blames Kiev and the West for the crisis, saying they plotted a coup in Ukraine. He denies sending arms and troops to back pro-Russian separatists in east Ukraine.
    Bush said the U.S. needed to continuously make clear that Article 5 was an obligation for all NATO members, including the U.S. and Washington needed to be more robust in expressing that.
    He said that training exercises in Poland and the Baltic nations needed to be "more robust", adding that while Moscow deployed tens of thousands of troops in areas near allies of the U.S., the response from Washington was "far less meaningful".
    He said it was essential to make sure that U.S. did not signal it was against Russia or isolate Moscow to such an extent that it ended up in the arms of China, adding that Russia needed to be a European country.
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