Fox News contributor Charles Krauthammer offered practical steps the United States could take to address the Ukrainian crisis Tuesday on Fox News.
Krauthammer said Russia's buzzing of a U.S. naval vessel was a show of "contempt" from Russian President Vladimir Putin to not only President Obama "the community organizer," but also intended to illustrate to the region that the U.S. is helpless and passive.
The FNC contributor criticized President Obama and the G-7 for so far not responding with heavier sanctions.
Host Bret Baier asked Krauthammer what he would do if he were president.
"The answer is what is so obvious," he said.
"You immediately fly in major supplies of light weaponry and defensive weaponry, anti-tank, anti-aircraft, so you begin to arm the Ukrainians, so when Putin makes a calculation, he understands there will never be any NATO troops in Ukraine to oppose him but now he has to think that if there is this unrest and there is some resistance in the east, it will be armed resistance. That is so obvious it's almost unspeakably obvious. The second is to reassure the neighbors, and you don't do it with a trip here and there by a Biden or a Secretary of Defense. What you do is you forward deploy NATO troops into places like the Baltics or into Poland. We had an understanding at the end of the Cold War we wouldn't do that because that would provoke the Russians. The response is to say you broke the understanding of the end of the Cold War, and now we're going to have NATO troops on your frontier. That's a way to send a message that means something and is not just hot air."