CHICAGO — Making a brief visit to Chicago on Friday, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said while Ukrainians have suffered tremendously, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has inflicted “extraordinary damage” on his own citizens and military and that U.S.-led sanctions will take a dramatic toll on Russia’s economy.
“The question that one would really love to ask the Russians if we could speak more directly and clearly to them is, ‘How is what Putin is doing in Ukraine, how has that changed your life for the better? Has it done a single thing that makes you better off?’” Blinken said.
“Putin has already lost in terms of what he was trying to accomplish. What he was trying to accomplish was to erase Ukraine and topple (Ukraine President Volodymyr) Zelenskyy, erase Ukraine as an independent country, subsume it into Russia. That has failed. That can’t succeed,” he said. “Where that settles is a profound question, and what damage is done in between now and then, we don’t know.”
