Minutes after issuing a stern warning to Russia and saying there will be a price to pay if it interferes militarily in Ukraine, President Obama headed to a “happy hour” with fellow Democrats.
Speaking at a fundraiser for the Democratic National Committee, Mr. Obama struck a very different tone than he had less than 30 minutes earlier, when he appeared with little warning in the White House press briefing room and issued a vague threat to Moscow.
“Well, it’s Friday. It’s after 5 o’clock. So, this is now officially happy hour with the Democratic party,” the president told his cohorts. “I can do that. It is an executive action. I have the authority.”
Russian troops moved into Crimea Friday, U.S. officials told Fox News, prompting Ukraine to accuse Russia of an "armed invasion."
At the White House, President Obama said the U.S. government is "deeply concerned" by reports of Russian "military movements" and warned any violation of Ukraine's sovereignty would be "deeply destabilizing."
"There will be costs" for any military intervention, he said, without specifying what those costs might be.
U.S. officials told Fox News they see “evidence of air and maritime movement into and out of Crimea by Russian forces” although the Pentagon declined to officially "characterize" the movement.
Agence France Press quoted a top Ukranian official as saying Russian aircraft carrying nearly 2,000 suspected troops have landed at a military air base near the regional capital of the restive Crimean peninsula.
"Thirteen Russian aircraft landed at the airport of Gvardeyskoye (near Simferopol) with 150 people in each one," Sergiy Kunitsyn, the Ukrainian president's special representative in Crimea, told the local ATR television channel, according to AFP. He accused Russia of an "armed invasion."
The new developments prompted Ukraine to accuse Russia of a "military invasion and occupation" -- a claim that brought an alarming new dimension to the crisis.
Russia kept silent on claims of military intervention, even as it maintained its hard-line stance on protecting ethnic Russians in Crimea, a peninsula of Ukraine on the northern coast of the Black Sea.
A spokesman for the Ukrainian border service said eight Russian transport planes have landed in Crimea with unknown cargo.
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