That's an excellent question.
Just to take us back for one moment, the Ukrainian government has the right to feel an enormous sense of betrayal, because when it gave up nuclear weapons, to put this in the broader context of security challenges in the world, Russia, the United States, and Britain guaranteed the integrity of Ukraine in the Budapest Memorandum in 1994.
The reason I bring this up, Mr. Dewar, is that it's so important that we all understand the significance of this as we ask other powers not to develop nuclear weapons. This in many ways is a case that is obviously important to Ukrainians, but whose importance goes way beyond Ukraine as a result of the international guarantees it received. That then affects my view of appropriate goals for the sanctions.
I think the first goal is that Russia come to the table and enter into a diplomatic process with the Government of Ukraine, helped by others in which there is some agreement on a fair and appropriate political process to canvass the opinion of Crimeans that the process we saw was unacceptable. That's to me an important goal because we in a sense gave our word to the Government of Ukraine. We can't simply turn our back and legitimate the dismemberment of any part of Crimea without a fair political process. That to me is the core goal.
Obviously the events of the last 24 hours are alarming. Here we need to send a clear message again that any engineered referenda in any other part of Ukraine would inflame the situation past the point of no return. The more strongly we say that over the next 48 hours—not only we, but the United States and the leaders of the European Union—the more likely we are to avert behaviour that will push people beyond the point of no return.