Obama defends 2014 Crimea response: ‘We challenged Putin with the tools we had at the time’

Former President Obama on Thursday defended his response to Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea, saying that circumstances were different then compared to Russia’s military invasion of Ukraine last year.

“Ukraine of that time was not the Ukraine that we’re talking about today,” Obama said in an interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour. “There’s a reason there was not an armed invasion of Crimea, because Crimea was full of a lot of Russian speakers, and there was some sympathy to the views that Russia was representing.”

Russia illegally held an election and annexed the Crimean peninsula of Ukraine in 2014. In response, the U.S. and European allies led a sanctions campaign which fell far short of its goals in weakening Russia and preventing further action in Ukraine.

Western allies did not provide Ukraine with any material support to fight Russia or object to the annexation beyond economic or diplomatic means, the former president argued.

Instead, Russia claimed Crimea as a rightful part of the country given that a majority of the population in the region was ethnically Russian and spoke Russian, a view that had some understanding in Europe, Obama said.

“Part of what happened was, both myself and also [German Chancellor Angela] Merkel, who I give enormous credit for, had to pull in a lot of other Europeans kicking and screaming to impose the sanctions that we did and to prevent Putin from continuing through the Donbass and through the rest of Ukraine,” he added.

Obama said that the sense of identity and ability to push back against Russia developed in Ukraine after the 2014 annexation, and that identity and ability is what led to the fierce resistance now.

“We challenged Putin with the tools that we had at the time, given where Ukraine was,” he said.

The CNN interview also touched on the U.S.’s complex relationship with authoritarian democratic leaders — such as Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and on the recent indictment of former President Trump and its impact on the 2024 election.