Thank you very much. It's my pleasure to be with the committee.
I don't have a formal opening statement, but what I would like to do is make a few remarks to set the scene, and then I would invite your questions so I can address issues that are top of mind to you.
To take a brief step back from the events of the last several weeks, there are some hard facts that confront us, the most important of which is the borders of Ukraine have been changed unilaterally by the Government of Russia. That is a fact we all have to deal with.
What is in dispute are the motives the Russian government has for acting unilaterally to absorb Crimea into the Russian Federation. I think it's important to recognize that we can only speculate. There is no hard, good evidence that we have at this point in time which would distinguish some fairly benign interpretations of Russia's motives from much darker interpretations of Russia's motives. I think this makes it very difficult to deal in an optimal way with the challenge we now face.
I think it's important, given this uncertainty, that we craft strategies that still leave room for a range of interpretations of Russia's motives, and we have the capacity to respond quickly and nimbly to events as they unfold on the ground.
This morning, clearly, there were concerning developments in the region of Donetsk, developments that look very familiar to what happened in Crimea. From that perspective, clearly there is cause for alarm, but again I want to assert that we do not have good evidence that can enable any of us to say with confidence at this moment in time what motives are driving Russian behaviour toward Ukraine.
Now I would invite your questions.