Harris said the Biden administration, along with its allies, had tried to engage with Moscow in good faith to find a diplomatic resolution but that effort was not reciprocated by the Kremlin.
“Russia continues to say it is ready to talk while at the same time it narrows the avenues for diplomacy,” Harris said. “Their actions simply do not match their words.”
Harris credited European allies for speaking with a largely unified voice as the latest Ukraine crisis has unfolded. The vice president said Republicans and Democrats in Washington — who rarely agree on many major issues — are generally in agreement on the necessity of confronting Putin.
“We didn’t all start out in the same place,” Harris said. “We came together and are now speaking with a unified voice. And that voice was a function of not only dialogue and debate, some concessions, but also the practical realization of the moment that we are in, which is that we are looking at a sovereign nation that may very well be on the verge of being invaded yet again.”
Harris on Friday met in Munich with the leaders of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, who stressed that a U.S. increase in its troop presence on the eastern edge of NATO is necessary.
The White House has not yet said whether it will fulfill those requests, but Harris suggested in her address on Saturday that an invasion could lead to a bolstered American presence.
“The imposition of these sweeping and coordinated measures will inflict great damage on those who must be held accountable. And we will not stop with economic measures,” Harris said. “We will further reinforce our NATO allies on the eastern flank.”
Biden and other U.S. have offered increasingly dire warnings that the window for diplomacy is narrow.
Biden told reporters Friday that he believes Putin has decided to invade in the coming days, taking military action that could go far beyond the disputed Donbas region in eastern Ukraine and include the capital of Kyiv.
The vice president was scheduled to meet later Saturday with Germany’s chancellor, Olaf Scholz.
Harris noted in her remarks that “not since the end of the Cold War” has the Munich conference “convened under such dire circumstances.”