Wednesday during an appearance on Fox News Channel’s “Special Report,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was asked to react to allegations the Russian government was offering bounties on American soldiers to Taliban in Afghanistan.
Pompeo declined to get into that specific issue. However, on the matter of current-day accountability for Russia, he blamed the previous Obama administration for giving the Russians a lot of “space” to operate.
“There’s been no administration to hold the Russians accountable in the way this one has. I only wish former Vice President Biden had held the Russians accountable. We’d have been cleaning up a lot less of a mess. I wish he’d provided arms to the Ukrainians. I wish he had gotten out of the INF treaty. I wish he hadn’t allowed and invited the Syrians – the Russians into Syria. I could go on, but you’ve got a short show. The failures of the previous administration allowed the Russians a lot of space to move.”
“We’ve pushed back. We’ve sanctioned more Russians than any other administration in history. I’ll take a backseat to no one with respect to what our administration and President Trump has done to hold Vladimir Putin accountable when he’s engaged in malign activity. And should we find out that there’s evidence that he’s putting our soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines at risk anywhere in the world – including in Afghanistan, I am very confident that President Trump will direct me, and he himself, will respond appropriately.
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