War seems an increasingly likely scenario. Joe Biden has stated this Friday before the press that he is “convinced” that the Russian leader, Vladimir Putin, “has made the decision” to invade Ukraine -including the capital, Kiev- in the coming days, a whole drum roll after of days in which Washington has been warning of the probability of the attack, although without taking it for granted. “At this moment I am convinced that he has made a decision. We have reason to believe it”, she responded to a journalist at the White House, in a brief appearance in which she, despite everything, insisted that the diplomatic channel remains open.
The US president raised the alert level after a night of tense fighting and worrying artillery exchanges in the east of the country between pro-Russian separatists and the Ukrainian army, whose skirmishes continue. “We have reason to believe that Russian forces are planning and intending to raid Ukraine next week, in the next few days,” he said, adding: “We believe they are targeting Kiev.” Biden cited the intelligence information collected to explain the conclusion he has reached and to denounce the growing “misinformation” spread among the Russian population about an alleged “Ukrainian plan to attack the Donbas region.”
This accusation, which the West denounces as false, would serve as a pretext for the Kremlin to justify the aggression against Ukraine. Biden stressed that “there is simply no proof” of these claims and considered it absurd that the Ukrainian government “choose this moment, with 150,000 Russian soldiers on the border, to escalate a conflict that has been going on for a year”, referring to the tension with the separatists of Donetsk and Lugansk (in the aforementioned Donbas region). Its leaders have called on the civilian population to flee to Russia, fueling the idea of imminent aggression. Western allies have been warning for weeks that Moscow was planning a “fake attack” to provide a pretext for its invasion of the former Soviet republic. The Ukrainian Army, on the other hand, “has shown great common sense in these tense moments, and restraint.”
He has avoided giving the diplomatic route for lost, with everything. Biden recalled that Secretary of State Antony Blinken has agreed to meet with his Russian counterpart. Sergei Lavrov, next February 24 in Europe. “But if Russia takes military action before that date, they will have clearly closed the door to diplomacy, they will have chosen to go to war, they will pay dearly for it,” the US leader stressed.
Earlier, he had met by videoconference with a group of European and NATO leaders for a videoconference to discuss the latest information from the intelligence services, which insist that the military attack may come “in the next few days.” Official US sources have warned the media that such an operation could include the use of fighter jets, tanks, ballistic missiles and a coordinated cyber attack.
The list of those summoned by the White House is made up of the members of the G-7 except Japan —the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz; the president of France, Emmanuel Macron; and the British prime minister, Boris Johnson, Italian, Mario Draghi, and Canadian, Justin Trudeau—, as well as the presidents of two countries bordering Ukraine, Poland, Andrzej Duda, and Romania, Klaus Iohannis. The presidents of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, and of the European Council, Charles Michel, and the Secretary General of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg, have also joined.
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All participants in the call “agreed that the danger of a Russian attack on Ukraine is very real,” said the German chancellor’s spokesman, Olaf Scholz. The leaders agree that they “expect Russia to refrain from further provocation and escalation and instead offer an urgently needed signal of de-escalation and accept repeated U.S. offers to negotiate.” States and allies,” he added in a statement. Berlin considers that the main task now is to “keep the window open for diplomacy” and that it is necessary to implement the Minsk agreements. The participants in the call once again expressed their solidarity and support for Ukraine and reiterated that, in the event of Russian aggression, they will jointly decide on the application of “far-reaching” measures against Moscow, informs Elena Sevillano.
That video call and his subsequent appearance at the White House, the second this week, should be framed in Biden’s commitment to show himself during this crisis as a leader with the lessons of 2014 – when Russia annexed the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea – learned and with iniciative. Also with a plan: his administration has decided to share almost immediately with journalists, senators and the general public the information they have about Russia’s intentions in order, by that means, to stop the expansionist aspirations of President Vladimir Putin.
Meanwhile, Washington is only increasing its estimates of the troops deployed by Moscow on its border with Ukraine, in Belarus and in occupied Crimea. Michael Carpenter, ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), has raised this Friday in Vienna, at a meeting convened by the multilateral organization to deal with the crisis, to between 169,000 and 190,000 the number of those soldiers. It is a figure significantly higher than the one offered by Biden on Tuesday in an appearance at the White House, when he spoke of 150,000. “We are facing the most important military mobilization in Europe since the Second World War,” assured Carpenter, who recalled that the United States set the number of troops on January 30 at 100,000.
The accumulation observed by Washington contrasts with the messages from Moscow in recent days about an alleged withdrawal of its troops. These pronouncements contributed to momentarily loosen tension at the beginning of a decisive week, but the White House and NATO have insisted these days that they have not been able to verify their veracity.
Putin has affirmed this Friday that he is prepared to continue on the path of diplomacy. “We are ready to negotiate, on the condition that all aspirations are considered equally, without separating Russia’s main proposals,” the president said at a press conference with his visiting ally, Aleksandr Lukashenko, in Moscow. President of Belarus, a country in which the Russian Army began military operations last week.
Meanwhile, a meeting “for next week” between the US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, and the Russian Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, has been confirmed. The announcement of that meeting helped to calm the markets. The Secretary of State explained that the conversation comes at a “dangerous moment for the life and safety of millions of people.”
“Pretext”
Blinken has traveled to Munich to participate in the Security Conference, a forum that brings together dozens of foreign and defense leaders and ministers every year in the Bavarian capital. On Thursday he appeared at the United Nations Security Council at Biden’s request. In that forum, he detailed the scenarios that the United States is considering for Russia to “construct a pretext” that justifies the attack. US officials have raised suspicions in the media that some of the news coming from eastern Ukraine could be part of a “false flag” operation intended to set up a stage for the invasion.
Vice President Kamala Harris has also traveled to Munich, in one of the most high-profile missions since she took office a year ago. He has already met with Stoltenberg and with the leaders of the Baltic countries, key in the crisis, and is scheduled to meet for several days with Scholz, the UK Foreign Minister, Liz Truss, or the President of Ukraine, Volodímir Zelensky. Harris will deliver a speech this Saturday in which she is expected to stress that NATO and the United States are perfectly aligned on this crisis, and that the consequences for Russia if she invades Ukraine will be severe.
Blinken, who has adopted a more belligerent attitude in recent days, has described in Munich as “cynical” the evacuation of civilians from eastern Ukraine to Russia, announced by the pro-Russian separatist leaders of the Ukrainian provinces of Donetsk and Lugansk. “It is cynical and cruel to use human beings as pawns, in order to distract from the fact that Russia is reinforcing its troops in the face of an attack,” said Blinken. “These types of announcements constitute new attempts to cover up, with lies and disinformation, that Russia is the aggressor in this conflict,” he added.
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