WARSAW, Poland -- President Barack Obama said the U.S. will bolster its military presence in Europe through a $1 billion initiative that is in direct response to Russia's annexation of Crimea and the stoking of unrest in Ukraine.
The U.S. president unveiled the assistance in Poland, a NATO ally, at the start of a four-day trip meant to reassure military partners and show a unified front in response to Russia's actions in Ukraine.
"I'm starting the visit here because our commitment to Poland's security as well as the security of our allies in central and eastern Europe is a cornerstone of our own security and it is sacrosanct," Obama told about 50 U.S. and Polish airmen and soldiers, with President Bronislaw Komorowski of Poland at his side. "As friends and allies, we stand united together and forever."
Obama is using meetings in Poland, Belgium and France to warn Russian President Vladimir Putin of the consequences of further provocations in the region while offering political and economic support for the new Ukrainian government.
The "basic principles of territorial integrity and sovereignty and freedom, the ability for people to make their own determination about their country's future is the cornerstone of the peace and security that we've seen over the last several decades," Obama said. "That is threatened by Russian actions in Crimea and now Russian activity in eastern Ukraine."
The challenges of maintaining allied unity greeted Obama upon his arrival in Warsaw as allied leaders, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and British Prime Minister David Cameron, joined with French President Francois Hollande in planning separate meetings Friday with Putin in France on the margins of ceremonies marking the 70th anniversary of D-Day in Normandy.
Even as Obama said the U.S. will confront any challenge to European allies, he, too, held out the prospect of talking with the Russian leader.
"We are interested in good relations with Russia. We are not interested in threatening Russia," Obama said. "We recognize that Russia has legitimate interests in what happens along its borders and has a long historic relationship with Ukraine."
Obama and Putin will cross paths at the Friday ceremonies. While the White House has said no formal meeting is planned, the U.S. and Russian leaders are almost certain to encounter each other in a group setting.
"I'm sure I'll see him. He's going to be there. It's important for us to acknowledge the role that Russia played during World War II, and that's part of what Normandy's about," Obama said.
Asked what he would tell Putin, Obama said he would say that if the U.S. sees "responsible behavior by the Russians over the next several months, then" it might be possible to "rebuild some of the trust that has been shattered over this past year."
"Rebuilding that trust will take quite some time," he said.
As the crisis in Ukraine has unfolded, the U.S. and NATO have emphasized the alliance's solidarity on defense.
Obama has dispatched about 600 paratroopers to Poland and other allies in the region and rotated more aircraft and support personnel through the area. But Polish leaders have been pressing for a more robust deployment and even creation of a permanent base on their territory.
"For the first time since the Second World War, one European country has taken a province by force from another European country," Radoslaw Sikorski, the Polish foreign minister, said in a telephone interview before Obama's arrival. "America, we hope, has ways of reassuring us that we haven't even thought about. There are major bases in Britain, in Spain, in Portugal, in Greece, in Italy. Why not here?"
In addition to increasing rotations of U.S. military personnel in the region, Obama said, he will ask Congress to approve a $1 billion fund the administration is calling the "European Reassurance Initiative." The money will be part of the Defense Department's fiscal-2015 request for contingency operations. The Pentagon's 2015 budget is about $496 billion, excluding war operations.
If the funding is approved, the Pentagon would ramp up its air and ground force rotations in Europe, as well as boost military exercises and position more equipment on the continent.
The plan also calls for increasing the U.S. Navy participation in NATO deployments in the Black and Baltic Seas and helping non-NATO nations such as Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine bolster their own defenses. But key details of the effort were unclear, including how big the U.S. troop increase on the continent might be.
Obama, who is to meet today with Ukrainian President-elect Petro Poroshenko, urged Russia to "engage constructively" with the Ukrainian government in Kiev.
He said Russia still faces the prospect of new sanctions, and now that Putin has begun to pull back his troops from the border, he needs to use his influence with armed separatists to persuade them to stop attacking Ukrainian forces, abandon seized buildings and lay down arms.
Obama also called on Putin to meet with Poroshenko, recognize the legitimacy of the election and facilitate a dialogue that will encourage people to participate in a "legitimate political process."
Obama said he hopes his European counterparts will relay that same message to Putin when they hold their meetings in France for the D-Day commemoration.
"Mr. Putin has a choice to make," Obama said.
The meetings of Putin, Merkel, Hollande and Cameron risk undercutting the show of unity that Obama has sought to emphasize since the crisis in Ukraine began, said Heather Conley, director of the Europe Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
"This signals the end of Vladimir Putin's isolation and does call into question exactly what approach Europe and the U.S. will take towards Russia in the future," Conley said. "This certainly will allow other international leaders to resume their relationship with President Putin as well."
"The 'return to normal' impulse -- after only two months after the annexation of Crimea -- is so much stronger for European leaders than consideration of its own future stability and security," she said.
The U.S. and European Union have imposed asset freezes and travel bans on 98 people and 20 companies, mostly in Russia. The tensions and the threat of further sanctions have sparked capital outflows and hurt the ruble, putting Russia's $2 trillion economy on the verge of recession.
With European countries having deeper economic ties to Russia than the U.S. does, the imposition of broader sanctions on Russia's economy has been a more difficult question for the allies.
"We have prepared economic costs on Russia that can escalate if we continue to see Russia actively destabilizing one of its neighbors," Obama said.
Even as he announced new commitments to Europe's security, Obama also called on NATO members to "step up," given a steady decline of defense spending in the region.
"That has to change," Obama said. "The United States is proud to bear its share of the defense of the trans-Atlantic alliance -- it is the cornerstone of our security -- but we can't do it alone."
Komorowski said Poland would increase its defense spending to 2 percent of gross domestic product. He said his discussions with Obama confirm U.S. security guarantees to Poland while "we're observing with anxiety Ukraine's crisis."
The "U.S. decision to increase NATO presence in eastern Europe is enormously important," Komorowski said.
Joined by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, Obama met Tuesday with Komorowski and Prime Minister Donald Tusk, reaffirming repeatedly what he called America's "rock solid commitment" to Polish security. He also met with the leaders of Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania and Slovakia, all of whom traveled there to hear a similar message.
Today in his meeting with Poroshenko, Obama hopes to reinforce U.S. support for the new government in Kiev as it tries to stabilize its rocky economy and quell a violent pro-Russia insurgency in the eastern part of the country, where there was fresh fighting Tuesday.
Later today, Obama will address a public rally marking the 25th anniversary of elections in Poland that led to the end of communist rule.
Then he will fly to Brussels to meet with leaders of Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Canada and Japan in a Group of 7 format. That meeting was originally supposed to be a Group of 8 summit in Sochi, Russia, hosted by Putin, but Russia was suspended from the group after its annexation of Crimea.
From Brussels, Obama is to travel to France for meetings in Paris and the ceremony in Normandy.
Information for this article was contributed by Julianna Goldman, Margaret Talev and Tony Capaccio of Bloomberg News; by Julie Pace, Nedra Pickler, Matthew Lee and Raf Casert of The Associated Press; and by Peter Baker of The New York Times.
A Section on 06/04/2014