Mr. President, later today we are expecting to hear about new sanctions on people close
to President Putin.
And I wanted to ask you, do you see this as a way to get to Mr. Putin's personal wealth?
Do you believe that he has amassed personal wealth that's unreported?
Or is it just a means of ratcheting up pressure before a move to sectoral sanctions?
You mentioned yesterday specifically the defense industry as an area where it doesn't make
sense to move without Europe moving.
I wanted to ask you, are we likely to see defense sanctions soon, banking and energy
sanctions soon?
What kind of timeframe?
And then, President Aquino, if I may, I also wanted to ask you about China and the new
agreement.
What I wanted to ask you is what message should China take away from the U.S. and the G7's
approach to Russia and Ukraine when it comes to territorial disputes?
And do you believe that the military agreement that we've just been talking about will in
and of itself deter China from being aggressive territorially, or should the U.S. begin developing
military options that could be possible contingencies if you needed to go that course?
Thanks.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: You're right, Margaret, that later today there will be an announcement
made, and I can tell you that it builds on the sanctions that were already in place.
As I indicated, we saw an opportunity through the Geneva talks to move in the direction
of a diplomatic resolution to the situation in Ukraine.
The G7 statement accurately points out that the government in Kyiv, the Ukrainian government,
has, in fact, abided by that agreement and operated in good faith.
And we have not seen comparable efforts by the Russians.
And as a consequence, we are going to be moving forward with an expanded list of individuals
and companies that will be affected by sanctions.
They remain targeted.
We will also focus on some areas of high-tech defense exports to Russia that we don't think
are appropriate to be exporting in this kind of climate.
The goal here is not to go after Mr. Putin, personally.
The goal is to change his calculus with respect to how the current actions that he's engaging
in in Ukraine could have an adverse impact on the Russian economy over the long haul,
and to encourage him to actually walk the walk and not just talk the talk when it comes
to diplomatically resolving the crisis in Ukraine.
There are specific steps that Russia can take.
And if it takes those steps, then you can see an election taking place in Ukraine; you
can see the rights of all people inside of Ukraine respected.
The Ukrainian government has put forward credible constitutional reforms of the sort that originally
Russian-speaking Ukrainians in the south and east said were part of their grievances, the
failure to have their voices heard and represented.
Kyiv has responded to those.
And so there's a path here to resolve this.
But Russia has not yet chosen to move forward, and these sanctions represent the next stage
in a calibrated effort to change Russia's behavior.
We don't yet know whether it's going to work.
And that's why the next phase if, in fact, we saw further Russian aggression towards
Ukraine could be sectoral sanctions, less narrowly targeted, addressing sectors like
banking or the defense industry.
So those would be more broad-based.
Those aren't what we'll be announcing today.
Today's will be building on what we've already done and continue to be narrowly focused but
will exact some additional costs on the Russians.
But we are keeping in reserve additional steps that we could take should the situation escalate
further.