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Obama Speaks Ahead of NATO Summit; Is There A Cease-fire in Ukraine?

Aired September 3, 2014 - 09:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Today your example, your victory, gives hope to people all over the world.

Yes, there will be setbacks and there will be frustrations, and there will be moments of doubt, and moments of despair. The currents of history ebb and flow. But over time, they flow toward freedom. More people in every corner of the Earth standing up and reaching to claim those rights that are universal. And that's why in the end our ideals are stronger. And that's why in the end, our ideals will win.

Dignity will win, because every human being is born equal with free will and inalienable rights, and any regime or system of government that tries to deny these rights will ultimately fail and countries that uphold them will only grow stronger.

Justice will win, because might does not make right, and the only path to lasting peace is when people know that their dignity will be respected and that their rights will be upheld. And citizens, like nations, will never settle for a world where the big are allowed to bully the small. Sooner or later they fight back.

(APPLAUSE)

Democracy will win, because a government's legitimacy can only come from citizens, because in this age of information and empowerment, people want more control over their lives, not less, and because more than any other form of government ever devised, only democracy, rooted in the sanctity of the individual, can deliver real progress.

And freedom will win, not because it's inevitable, not because it is ordained, but because these basic human yearnings for dignity and justice and democracy do not go away.

They can be suppressed. At times, they can be silenced. But they burn in every human heart, in a place where no regime could ever reach, a light that no army can ever extinguish.

And so long as free peoples summon the confidence and the courage and the will to defend the values that we cherish, then freedom will always be stronger and our ideas will always prevail. No matter what.

Thank you. And long live our great alliance.

(APPLAUSE)

Thank you very much. Thank you.

(APPLAUSE)

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: All right, so there he is, the president of the United States, delivering a major address before a group of about 2,000 people who have gathered in this concert hall in Tallinn in Estonia, making it clear that the United States, like other NATO allies, will come to the defense of all of the NATO allies, including the Baltic states, whether in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, or any of the other countries, reiterating that support. But the major - the major effort of the president today was to send the powerful message to Russia, in the president's words, the United States will never recognize Russia's illegal annexation of Crimea or any other part of Ukraine.

The president also making it clear that the United States and the NATO allies sees Russia's aggressions as unacceptable. The -- it has been pro-Russian separatists, he says, who are encouraged by Russia, financed by Russia, trained by Russia, supplied by Russia, armed by Russia. And then he goes on to say, Russian combat forces with Russian weapons and Russian -- in Russian tanks, they are in Ukraine, this is unacceptable to the NATO alliance.

Jim Acosta is our senior White House correspondent. He's traveling with the president in Estonia right now.

The president delivering that powerful message to the people in Estonia. This is clearly what the folks, the NATO allies, especially on the border with Russia, want to hear, Jim.

JIM ACOSTA, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: That's right, Wolf. It was a stout defense of the NATO alliance, and, you know, the president reiterated that an attack on one is an attack on all, and that is stated right there in Article Five in the NATO charter and the president wanted to deliver that message to the Baltics, where they are very uneasy about the event that are unfolding in Ukraine. But Estonia, where the president was just speaking here a few moments ago, is different than Ukraine. It has something that Ukraine does not, and that is NATO partnership. And the president making it very clear saying that the United States will continue to do military exercises in the Baltics, that actually those are being stepped up. And the president going on to say that NATO, later on this week at the summit in Wales, will be talking about ways of creating this rapid response force that we've been hearing about over the last several days that would essentially give NATO forces the ability to more quickly respond to the type of irregular forces that Russia has been fomenting in parts of eastern Ukraine.

But, Wolf, there were a couple of jabs right at Russian President Vladimir Putin. The president at one point saying that what is happening in Ukraine right now is not a humanitarian mission on the part of the Russians. And the president essentially putting his finger in the eye of Vladimir Putin and saying that he just simply doesn't believe what's happening there and calling it an act of aggression. Here's what the president had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We gather here today, we know that this vision is threatened by Russia's aggression against Ukraine. It is a brazen assault on the territorial integrity of Ukraine, a sovereign and independent European nation. It challenges that most basic of principles of our international system, that borders cannot be redrawn at the barrel of a gun, that nations have the right to determine their own future. It undermines an international order, where the rights of peoples and nations are upheld and can't simply be taken away by brute force.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ACOSTA: And, Wolf, you know, a couple of other things that I thought were interesting coming out of this speech. He offered a defense of the Ukrainians in terms of their nationalistic sentiments, saying that there isn't Nazism going on in Ukraine. That is a chief argument and accusation that is made by the Russians as to what is happening in the Ukraine and sort of bolstering their support back home in Moscow. The president really calling that propaganda.

And then there are a couple of veiled references, Wolf, to what happened in Nazi, Germany, back in World War II. The president making some oblique references, almost accusing Vladimir Putin of having the same kinds of designs on Europe. There were some subtle references in this speech that he just gave a few moments ago and also in his remarks at that news conference earlier this morning. So I picked up on that as well.

But, Wolf, obviously the president has been thrown off message somewhat. He had intended this trip to be all about - or nearly all about Ukraine and Russia and delivering this moral support to the eastern Europeans about their part in NATO. But, obviously, Wolf, the events that are unfolding in Syria and Iraq with respect to ISIS, the beheading of American journalist Steven Sotloff, the president responded to that earlier this morning.

And, Wolf, just one more interesting thing I wanted to point out. Earlier this morning in his remarks at the news conference, the president said it was his goal to degrade and destroy ISIS. And then later on in those remarks said that he wanted to render ISIS to be more of a manageable problem that can be dealt with in the Middle East. Wolf, I talked to a senior administration official, because they wanted to make it very clear that the president was not walking back that goal of degrading and destroying. The senior administration official saying the president does indeed have the goal of destroying ISIS.

Wolf.

BLITZER: First degrade and then destroy. He used both of those words at that news conference in Estonia.

ACOSTA: That's right. BLITZER: One quick point. In addition to really blasting the Russians,

blasting Putin, if you will, for going ahead, in his words, doing what they're doing in Ukraine, saying the United States, the NATO allies, will never accept the illegal annexation of Crimea or any other parts of Ukraine. He then went on to say this. It sort of jumped out at me and I'm anxious to get your thoughts on this, Jim. NATO must make concrete commitments to help Ukraine modernize and strengthen its security forces. Does that mean the U.S. and other NATO allies are going to start providing weapons to Ukraine, which is not unlike Estonia or Latvia or Poland, Lithuania, a member of NATO, but does have some partnership alliances with NATO. He says the U.S. must modernize and strengthen -- help strengthen Ukraine's forces. I wonder if that means providing weapons to the Ukrainian military. And then he goes on to say, we must do more to help other NATO partners. And then he cites two other republics on the borders with Russia, Georgia and Moldova, strengthen their defenses as well. If you're Putin, if you're the Russians, you hear him talking about Georgia, Moldova, Ukraine, NATO strengthening their partnership militarily, speaking with those countries.

ACOSTA: Right.

BLITZER: That is - that is very, very powerful to Vladimir Putin, Sergey Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister. The Russians hate that kind of talk.

ACOSTA: They absolutely do.

BLITZER: If anything, it could have - it could have an impact of even strengthening their desire to stand up to NATO and the U.S.

ACOSTA: And I think, Wolf, that is the balancing act that this president is trying to deal with now because, as you mentioned, when he talked about upgrading Ukraine's defensive capabilities, that was a tip of the hat to calls in Congress that are coming right now from people like Bob Menendez, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who would like to see more weapons, more arming of the rebels - or not the rebels but of the Ukrainian military.

But when the president talks about upgrading the defensive capabilities of other countries along Russia's border, that is absolutely an irritant to Moscow and Vladimir Putin. They have talked about this extensively. And, Wolf, as you know, Vladimir Putin seems to have this notion that he would like to sort of rewrite the last 25 years, the post Soviet Union years. They don't like the fact that NATO has crept right up against Russia's border. They would like to basically go back in time and try to, you know, renegotiate some of that.

But I think what the president is saying today is that as Vladimir Putin pushes into Ukraine, the president is prepared to push back. And, Wolf, you heard that talk about rapid response force that NATO is putting together. I think one of the key questions coming out of this summit this week, Wolf, is, how far would that rapid response force go? If they met irregular forces in a NATO country that had spilled over into a border of a NATO country and there was firing and shooting going on, what would happen next? I think what the president is saying today is that because that NATO article five is sacrosanct, that the United States must be willing to be engaged militarily with Russian forces if it comes to that. But it's a key question I think for the summit, Wolf.

BLITZER: Yes. And we'll see how far the U.S., the other NATO partners go in actually arming the Ukrainian military in the face of what they regard as a Russian invasion, aggression of Ukrainian sovereignty.

Jim Acosta, stand by. We'll continue our special coverage, our team coverage in just a moment. We have our analysts, our reporters, they're all standing by. Much more on the breaking news right after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLITZER: Welcome back to our special coverage. I'm Wolf Blitzer in Washington. We want, once again, to welcome our viewers in the United States and around the world.

This morning, Ukraine trying to clarify its earlier announcement that a cease-fire has been reached with Russia. Let's bring in CNN's Reza Sayah. He's joining us from Kiev. Diana Magnay, she's in eastern Ukraine.

Diana, you're right in the heart of rebel territory. First of all, what are you seeing? What are you hearing about this proposed cease- fire that had been announced earlier in the day, but there seems to be murky right now.

DIANA MAGNAY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, there seems to be no evidence on the ground, Wolf, of this cease-fire at all. We've been in this area for -- all day really, and down in the valley in the morning. We heard a large exchange of mortars, machine gunfire, small arms fire. It still -- the battle seems to be raging in many pockets of Ukraine.

The argument has always been of the separatists that this is their conflict, that President Putin -- or in fact President Putin's argument is that this conflict is not his to orchestrate peace for. And the separatists have basically said, according to Russian state media, that Ukraine has to remove its armed forces from this region, if they are to lay down their weapons.

I just want to bring your attention to one thing, Wolf, that we have found here on what is effectively a battle scene, a battle that raged a few days ago. We've seen SS-21s, surface-to-surface missiles. There are burned out tank vehicles stretching all the way down this road. Clearly a lot of people died here. The sound of putrefying death wafts past me from time to time.

But we were picking through the wreckage, and here we found -- this says Army of Russia. This is an army ration supply for the Russian army. And if anything tells you that Russia's troops, Russian tanks are involved in this conflict, it is evidence like this. So however much Mr. Putin denies that he has anything to do with this conflict, that his troops aren't on the ground, they certainly seem to be, Wolf. BLITZER: Diana, those burned out destroyed tanks that we're all

seeing behind you right now, and you say they go on for a while, are they Russian tanks? Are they Ukrainian tanks? What's the assessment over there?

MAGNAY: Well, we found the insignia of the Ukrainian National Guard on caps that have been left on the ground. We can't tell whether they are Russian tanks. Russian tanks and Ukrainian tanks are the same Soviet-era tank systems.

The missile that I was talking about, a huge -- the tail fin there, absolutely gigantic, an SS-21 -- that is also Soviet issue for both armies. So it's difficult to tell whose tanks these are. But when I've spoken to rebels over the past few days, they say all the tanks that we have are the spoils of war. They are ones that we have captured from the Ukrainians along the way.

Well, they haven't bothered to come and take these, and the tanks that they are driving around are immaculate, they have hardly a scratch on them, all the people who are driving them can drive them very well, clearly they've had training. They also have all the regular military issue that would go with those kinds of tanks. It is very difficult to believe that they would have captured all of that from the Ukrainians. Wolf?

BLITZER: Diana Magnay, be careful over there. We'll check back wit hyou. I want to go to the Ukrainian capital of Kiev. Right now, Reza Sayah is there.

Clarify, Reza, what we know about this proposed cease-fire. We know there was a phone call between the Ukrainian President Poroshenko, the Russian President Putin. What do we know about a cease-fire?

REZA SAYAH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Wolf, we should point out that not a mention of this agreement, this alleged cease-fire, by President Obama in his speech in Estonia. It's not clear why. Maybe he didn't have time to adjust his speech or maybe, like us, he's waiting for some of the details of this cease-fire because yet to be revealed.

Even so, it's the biggest indication yet that we may be close to a break-through or a cease-fire. Let's explain to you what we know.

Earlier today, the Russian news agency Interfax reported that the Russian president Vladimir Putin had a phone conversation with Petro Poroshenko, the Ukrainian president. And the two leaders, according to Interfax, agreed to a road map to get out of this conflict. Obviously we waited to hear from Ukrainian officials here in Kiev, and a short time later, they indeed confirmed the phone call and they took it a step further.

The office of President Poroshenko saying this, and this is a quote, "The result of the conversation was an agreement on a cease-fire regime in Donbas." This is the southeastern Ukrainian region where the conflict is taking place. "The parties reached a mutual understanding on the steps that would facilitate the establishment of peace." That term cease-fire, in that statement, didn't come out of Moscow.

So we reached out to Moscow for clarification, and Moscow pointed out to us that Mr. Putin could not authorize a cease-fire because he was not a party to this conflict. So something is happening. Not clear what. We're waiting on a formal announcement, Wolf.

BLITZER: And hopefully there will be an announcement that a cease- fire is in place, that the killing, the death, at least for the time being, will stop. Reza, stand by.

I want to bring in the former United States ambassador to the United Nations, Bill Richardson, who is joining us right now together with our other analysts. We got Jill Daughterty, Gordon Chang, among others. But stand by.

I want to get your sense, Governor Richardson, right now. Cease-fire, no cease-fire? Is Russia going to blink?

BILL RICHARDSON, FORMER U.S. AMBASSADOR TO THE U.S.: No, I don't think Russia is going to blink. And I think what the president did was very necessary, very strong speech. Number one, even though I think the U.S.-Russia relationship is now beyond repair; secondly, he sent a very strong message, a defining moment for NATO, we're going to stand by our allies, the Baltic estates. An attack on them, Article 5.

But I think what's in the mix now is a balancing act for the president. I think obviously he's going to want to increase economic sanctions, but they're not sufficient to deter Russia. So I think a decision is going to have to be made on providing artillery, training, radars to Ukraine. I think there's going to be pressure from the Congress to do that.

But then there's the ISIS issue. When he goes to the Wales summit, the NATO summit, we need our European allies in this coalition. We need them to help us with the air strikes. We need them on sanctions at the ISIS militants.

So it's a balancing act, but I thought the president did not sugar coat. He was very strong, and I believe he sent that message to Russia that what they've done is unacceptable. Stand by Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania. Defining moment for NATO. We're going to go beyond there if there's an attack on you.

So I think this is U.S. foreign policy reaffirming our strongest alliance, NATO, but looking for new ways to pressure Russia, to deter them from taking steps. Hopefully a cease-fire will be announced. But Russia is on the move. They've got too many weapons. Putin is at 90 percent popularity. I don't think he's going to stop.

BLITZER: He's clearly -- what he's doing in Ukraine is clearly very popular with a whole element of the people of Russia.

But here's what Putin also sees, and the president didn't mention any of this in his speech, Governor Richardson. Putin sees France, for example, continuing arms sales, sophisticated weapons sales, to Russia. Putin sees Germany, for example, continuing like other countries in Europe to purchase a lot of gas, a lot of energy sources from Russia. There's a lot of money at stake in all of this, and the Europeans, yes, they're doing a little bit of the sanctions, but there's still a whole lot of trade, included sophisticated weaponry, energy sources, going on between NATO allies and Russia. How do you explain that?

RICHARDSON: Well, it would be nice, it would be positive if France canceled that helicopter sale to Russia because that would send a very strong signal. But the reality is that, if you look at the sanctions that were imposed by Germany, by the European Union, imposed some two weeks, they're pretty tough sanctions. I think the test is going to be can they be strengthened? Can they now include the banking, the energy sector, the tech sector, more than they did in the initial sanctions? So that's going to be test number one.

But I think, as much as I hate to say this, I think the decision on Ukraine about whether there's going to be any boots on the ground, any Western assistance beyond helping the Ukrainian government with weapons and training and ammunition, is not going to happen. So what he did with the Baltic states is send that message that we're going to stand behind them no matter what, and I think that was a message that needed to be sent.

BLITZER: all right, Governor Richardson, stand by. I want to bring in Jill Dougherty, our former Moscow bureau chief for CNN. She's a real expert on Russian affairs. Also Gordon Chang, a Forbes.com columnist, an expert on nuclear proliferation; our senior international correspondent Nic Robertson; and our senior political analyst David Gergen along with our CNN military analyst, Lieutenant General Mark Hertling.

Why is what he's doing in Ukraine, Jill, so popular within a huge, huge chunk of the Russian population?

JILL DOUGHERTY, FMR. CNN. MOSCOW BUREAU CHIEF: I think you would have to say that they are tired of, as they would put it, you know, being kicked in the mouth by the West. A lot of Russians long for the days when the Soviet Union was a major country, nuclear weapons, which of course they still have, and was respected or, let's say, feared. Either way, that's what a lot of Russians long for.

However, it's another issue. I mean, I think it's very important to point out that phrase that the president talked about, that these Baltic nations, which used to be part of the Soviet Union, are not some part of post-Soviet space. They are independent countries. And the fear is that those small nations have very large percentages of Russian speakers who were left after the end of the Soviet Union.

And the fear that the West has is that Russia would try to do the same thing -- indirectly moving in, stirring up dissent and dissatisfaction among the Russians in those countries, and then try to -- let's move in with little green men. So that is one of the reasons that the president is standing there in Estonia saying what he said.

Wolf, very important. Just as the president was speaking, President Putin was clarifying some of this -- is there a cease-fire, is there not a cease-fire? Essentially what they're saying, the Russian media I've been following as President Obama spoke, they're saying that Putin is putting out, as he put it, a handwritten 7-point plan of how this could be resolved.

And I think there are two important points. Self-defense forces, the rebels, stop their offensive actions, and Ukraine withdraws its forces from areas where it can actually fire on civilians. And then there's an international control over that cease-fire. It's not a cease-fire. This is really what he's saying is these are the elements we'd like to see, but you have to read the fine print, because he's not saying that the rebels pull out, lay down their arms, and give up. And that is really what Ukraine wants.

BLITZER: Nic Robertson, you're there in Wales already getting ready for this NATO summit. President Obama will be flying there later today, a major, major meeting of this NATO alliance. And the president makes it sound like all the NATO allies are on the same page when it comes to Russia, but you know, I know, a lot of people know that that is not necessarily the case, that there are some who are deeply concerned if the NATO alliance goes ahead and strengthens some of those sanctions, the Western European countries could pay a significant financial price for those tougher sanctions, right?

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Absolutely. France, with its defense contracts, Germany, with it depending on its 30 percent of its gas coming from Russia. All of these are concerns.

But, you know, there's another money issue here as well, and President Obama alluded to it there in his speech. He congratulated Estonia for spending 2 percent of its GDP on defense, which is a NATO goal for all 28-member nations. The United States spends the most, about double that figure, almost 4 percent of its GDP on defense.

But, you know, there are 21 nations out of those 28 inside NATO that don't spend that level of money. He said Latvia, Lithuania had committed to increasing their defense spending. But part of this proposal to go on a more Eastern-leaning foot, these bases, prepositioned equipment, rotating of troops, much closer to Russia's soil, all of this is going to cost money, and this is what President Obama was meaning here. He wants the Europe point nations, the other members of NATO who haven't stepped up their defense spending, now to recognize that they have a real threat on their borders and spend the money.

It's also as well not just about -- and he made mention of this, President Obama made mention of it -- not just about the money itself, but what it's spent on. Don't necessarily bulk up your armies with more troops, but spend it on things like surveillance, reconnaissance, intelligence, missile defense systems. These are going to be some of the new components that are going to be necessary to -- if you will -- get ahead of a Russian threat as we're seeing it in Ukraine. Deterrence that will include ways to stop the sort of propaganda flow that Russia has sort of poured across the borders into Eastern Ukraine, that it could do toward Russian speakers in the Baltics, to stir up unease and fear. So this is sort of going to be the focus. Of course, the concern that

European nations drawn into greater conflict, if you will, with Russia, there will be a price to pay. But also that there is a price to pay, and that's dipping in the pocket, to up defense spending, Wolf.

BLITZER: Nic Robertson. Stand by. It's now the top of the our. Just want to reset for our viewers here.