Obama casts Russia as threat to peace in Europe

bama says the Baltic nations lost their independence once before. He says with NATO, they'll never lose it again.

U.S. President Barack Obama gestures while speaking during his and Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves news conference at the Bank of Estonia in Tallinn, Estonia, Wednesday, Sept. 3, 2014. (Source: AP)

President Barack Obama is reassuring anxious allies that NATO will come to their defense if Russia attempts to intervene within their borders.

Obama is delivering a speech to U.S. and Estonian military members in the Estonian capital of Tallinn.

Obama says the Baltic nations lost their independence once before. He says with NATO, they’ll never lose it again.

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Obama is also casting Russia’s aggression in Ukraine as a threat to peace in Europe. He’s condemning Moscow’s provocations and rejecting Russian claims that its forces are only performing humanitarian or peacekeeping missions in eastern Ukraine.

But Obama is offering no new options for penalizing Russia beyond more sanctions.

The president’s assurances come at the start of a three-day trip to Europe. Obama heads later Wednesday to a NATO summit in Wales.

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