President Biden said Russia will target Ukraine’s capital Kyiv in the coming week.The Russian president said earlier on Friday that he remained open to diplomacy.
WASHINGTON — President Biden said on Friday that U.S. intelligence showed that Russian President Vladimir V. Putin had made a final decision to invade Ukraine.
“We have reason to believe that Russian forces are planning and intending to attack Ukraine in the coming week and in the next few days,” Biden said in the Roosevelt Room of the White House.”We believe they will target Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine, a city of 2.8 million innocent people.”
Asked if he thought Mr Putin was still hesitating, Mr Biden said, “I believe he has made that decision.” He later added that his impression of Putin’s intentions was based on US intelligence.
Previously, the president and his top national security aides had said they did not know whether Mr Putin had made a final decision to follow through on his threat to invade Ukraine.
“It’s not too late to de-escalate and get back to the negotiating table,” Biden said, referring to planned talks between Secretary of State Anthony J. Blinken and Russia’s foreign minister next week.”If Russia takes military action before that day, it’s clear they have closed the door on diplomacy.”
Mr. Biden also stressed that the United States and its allies would jointly impose severe economic sanctions if Russian troops crossed the Ukrainian border.
Source: Rochan Consulting | Map Notes: Russia invaded and annexed Crimea in 2014.The action is widely condemned by international law, and the territory remains contested.The dotted line in eastern Ukraine is the rough dividing line between the Ukrainian army, which has been fighting since 2014, and Russian-backed separatists.On the eastern edge of Moldova is the Russian-backed breakaway region of Transnistria.
The president spoke after another round of virtual talks with European leaders on Friday afternoon.
Tensions in the region escalated as Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine called on Friday for a mass evacuation from the region, claiming that an attack by Ukrainian government forces was imminent.Western officials have denounced it as Russia’s latest attempt to create an excuse for an invasion.
Biden’s remarks follow a new assessment by U.S. officials in Europe that Russia has amassed as many as 190,000 people on the Ukrainian border and within the two pro-Moscow separatist regions of Donetsk and Luhansk. army.
Putin insisted on Friday that he was ready for further diplomacy.But Russian officials said the country’s military would conduct exercises over the weekend that would include the firing of ballistic and cruise missiles.
The prospect of testing the country’s nuclear forces adds to the ominous feeling in the region.
“We are ready to get on the negotiating track on condition that all issues are considered together without departing from Russia’s main proposal,” Putin said at a news conference.
Kyiv, Ukraine — Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine on Friday called for the evacuation of all women and children in the region, claiming that a massive attack by the Ukrainian military was imminent, as fears of a Russian invasion of Ukraine grew.
The head of Ukraine’s defense ministry said the claim that an attack was imminent was false, a tactic aimed at escalating tensions and providing a pretext for a Russian aggression.He directly appealed to people living in the area, telling them they were fellow Ukrainians and not threatened by Kyiv.
Separatist leaders have called for an evacuation as Russian state-controlled media published a steady stream of reports claiming the Ukrainian government was stepping up attacks on these breakaway areas — Donetsk and Luhansk.
The United States and its NATO allies have been warning for days that Russia could use false reports from eastern Ukraine about violent threats against ethnic Russians living there to justify the attack.The separatists’ exaggerated warnings – they offer no evidence of imminent danger – have been welcomed by the Ukrainian government’s sense of urgency.
Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov urged Ukrainians in separatist-held territory to ignore Russian propaganda that the Ukrainian government will attack them.”Don’t be afraid,” he said.”Ukraine is not your enemy.”
But Denis Pushilin, the pro-Moscow leader of the Donetsk People’s Republic, a breakaway state on Ukrainian soil, offered a very different version of what might have happened.
“Soon, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will order the army to attack and carry out plans to invade the territory of the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics,” he said in a video posted online, without providing any evidence.
“From today, February 18, a massive organized population transfer to Russia is being organized,” he added.”Women, children and the elderly need to be evacuated first. We urge you to listen and make the right decision,” he said, noting that accommodation will be provided in Russia’s nearby Rostov region.
The leader of the Luhansk separatists, Leonid Pasechnik, issued a similar statement on Friday, urging those not in the military or “running social and civilian infrastructure” to go to Russia.
While Moscow and Kyiv have long offered contrasting accounts of the conflict, calls for some 700,000 people to flee the region and seek safety in Russia have escalated sharply.It is unclear how many people actually left the country.
Russia’s Vladimir V. Putin has claimed Ukraine is carrying out a “genocide” in the eastern Donbas region, and his ambassador to the United Nations has likened the Kyiv government to the Nazis.
On Friday night, Russian state media aired reports of major car bombings and other attacks in the region.It is difficult to independently verify these reports as access to Western journalists in separatist territory is severely restricted.
Social media is flooded with conflicting accounts and images that cannot be immediately verified.
Some photos posted online showed people queuing at ATMs, suggesting a mass flight, while a Ukrainian official sent a video from what he said was Donetsk traffic cameras that did not show the bus convoy or any panic. or signs of evacuation.
Earlier in the day, Michael Carpenter, the U.S. ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, said Russia was looking for an excuse to attack Ukraine and take advantage of serious tensions in the eastern Donbass.
“Starting a few weeks ago, we have been informed that the Russian government is planning fictitious attacks by Ukrainian military or security forces on Russian-speaking people on sovereign Russian territory or in separatist-controlled territory to justify military action against Ukraine, ‘ he wrote, adding that international observers should “beware of false claims of ‘genocide.’”
Kyiv, Ukraine — Russian President Vladimir V. Putin has once again succeeded in destabilizing Ukraine without outright declaring war or taking action to trigger draconian sanctions promised by the West, and made it clear that Russia could damage the country’s economy.
The evacuation of U.S., U.K. and Canadian citizens announced last week sparked panic.Several international airlines have stopped flights to the country.Russian naval exercises in the Black Sea have exposed the vulnerability of a key port for commercial shipping in Ukraine.
“The number of requests is decreasing every day,” said Pavlo Kaliuk, a freelance real estate agent in the Ukrainian capital who used to sell and rent properties to clients from the United States, France, Germany and Israel.When Russia first began deploying troops on the country’s borders in November, the deal quickly dried up.
Pavlo Kukhta, an adviser to Ukraine’s energy minister, said Kyiv’s anxiety was exactly what Putin wanted to achieve.”All they want to do is create a huge panic here, the equivalent of winning the war without firing a single bullet,” Mr Kuhta said.
Timofiy Mylovanov, dean of the Kyiv School of Economics and a former minister of economic development, said his institution estimated that the crisis had cost Ukraine “billions of dollars” in just the past few weeks.A war or prolonged siege will only worsen the situation.
The first major blow came on Monday, when two Ukrainian airlines said they could not insure their flights, forcing the Ukrainian government to set up a $592 million insurance fund to keep the planes flying.On February 11, the London-based insurer warned airlines that they would not be able to insure flights to or over Ukraine.Dutch company KLM Airlines responded by saying it would stop flights.In 2014, many Dutch passengers were on Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 when it was shot down over territory held by pro-Moscow rebels.German airline Lufthansa said it will suspend flights to Kyiv and Odessa from Monday.
But the U.S. response to the crisis has also angered some, whether through alarmist warnings of an imminent invasion or the decision to evacuate some embassy staff from Kyiv and set up a makeshift office in the western city of Lviv, close to ties with Poland border.
“When someone decides to move the embassy to Lviv, they have to understand that news like this will cost the Ukrainian economy hundreds of millions of dollars,” David Arakamia, leader of the ruling People’s Party, said in a televised interview. Added: “We are calculating the economic damage every day. We cannot borrow in foreign markets because the interest rates there are too high. Many exporters reject us.”
An earlier version of this article incorrectly identified the airline whose plane was shot down over territory controlled by pro-Moscow rebels in 2014.This is a Malaysia Airlines plane, not a KLM plane.
The United States said on Friday that Russia may have amassed as many as 190,000 troops near the Ukrainian border and in separatist parts of the country’s east, sharply raising its estimates of a Moscow surge as the Biden administration tries to convince the world of the looming threat of invasion .
The assessment was issued in a statement by the U.S. mission to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, calling it “the most significant military mobilization in Europe since World War II.”
“We estimate that Russia may have gathered between 169,000 and 190,000 people in and around Ukraine, up from around 100,000 on January 30,” the statement read. “This estimate includes along the border, Belarus and the occupied Crimea; the Russian National Guard and other internal security forces deployed to these areas; and Russian-led forces in eastern Ukraine.”
Russia characterized the troop surge as part of routine military exercises, including joint exercises with Belarus, a friendly country on Ukraine’s northern border, close to Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv.The exercises, involving Russian troops from hundreds of miles to the east, are set to end on Sunday.
Moscow also announced large-scale exercises in Crimea, a peninsula Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014, and maritime military exercises involving amphibious landing ships off Ukraine’s Black Sea coast, sparking concerns over a possible naval blockade. worry.
The new U.S. assessment comes after Ukraine called for an emergency meeting of the OSCE, of which Russia is also a member, to ask Russia to explain the build-up.The 57-nation body requires member states to provide advance warning and information about certain military activities.
Russia said the troop deployment did not meet the group’s definition of “unconventional and unplanned military activity” and declined to provide an answer.
U.S. estimates of Russian troop deployments have been rising steadily.In early January, Biden administration officials said the number of Russian troops was about 100,000.That number grew to 130,000 in early February.Then, on Tuesday, President Biden put the number at 150,000 — usually brigades from as far away as Siberia to join the force.
Allegations of a car bomb and unsubstantiated claims of an imminent attack by Ukrainian troops have heightened tensions in areas controlled by pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine.The New York Times collected footage of the day to analyze some of the claims:
Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine have made unsubstantiated claims that Ukraine targeted the vehicle of one of their military leaders with explosives on Friday.Footage taken by pro-Russian news media at the scene showed the damaged vehicle on fire.
Earlier on Friday, separatist leaders warned of an imminent attack by Ukrainian forces – an unsubstantiated allegation, which Ukraine denies.
Post time: May-14-2022