US Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned on Thursday that there will be a “rapid and severe” reaction from his country and allies if Russia advances its borders with Ukraine.
“We have always been very clear, any transgression by Russian military forces on the Ukrainian border to commit further acts of aggression against Ukraine will be met with a severe response from the US and our allies,” Blinken said in Berlin, during a meeting with the Foreign Minister of Ukraine. Germany, Annalena Baerbock.
Also on Thursday, Blinken held meetings with their counterparts in France and the United Kingdom. Tomorrow, the head of US diplomacy is due to meet Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Switzerland.
Yesterday in Kiev, Blinken promised more military aid to Ukraine and warned that Russian President Vladimir Putin has the ability to “double” his military presence on the Ukrainian border in “a very short time”.
US President Joe Biden told a news conference on Wednesday that he believes Russia will invade Ukraine, warning Putin he will pay “a heavy price”.
The Kremlin said Biden’s statement about a possible invasion of Ukraine and the disaster it would mean for Russia could contribute to “destabilizing the situation” in that country.
“They can create false hopes” among some representatives of the Ukrainian government “who, as it is called under the table, may decide to resume the civil war in their country and try to solve the problems of the Southeast by force of force” (Donbass), said the Presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov during his daily telephone press conference.
He considered that Biden’s statements “do not in any way allow for a reduction in the tension that has arisen at this time in Europe”.
“That, due to certain hypothetical actions, Russia will have to pay a high price, is heard daily from experts at the level of heads of state,” he said. On the other hand, he considered it insufficient for Biden to assure at a press conference that “it is not very likely” that Ukraine will join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in the short term.
maneuvers
The Russian Navy announced this Thursday that it will carry out large-scale maneuvers throughout the national territory with the participation of more than 140 ships and almost 10,000 soldiers.
More than 60 aircraft and 1,000 military teams will participate in naval exercises in January and February. The objective of the maneuvers is “the defense of Russian national interests at sea” and also “the fight against military threats” to the country.
A note from the Russian Defense Ministry specifies that ships and aircraft will carry out the exercises in territorial and international waters, and separate maneuvers will also be carried out from the Mediterranean Sea to the North Sea and Okhotsk, in the Pacific Ocean and in the northeastern part of the Atlantic.
Coinciding with this announcement, Russian Marine Corps units arrived in Belarus today for exercises called “Allied Determination 2022”.
These exercises, which the United States called “worrying” because they take place close to the Ukrainian border, aim to inspect the capabilities of Russian and Belarusian rapid reaction forces at four airfields and five military sites.
Moscow denies that it is planning an invasion of Ukraine and defends its right to carry out maneuvers on its territory and on the fringes of the Russia-Belarus State Union, while rejecting that they represent an escalation on the border with the neighboring country.
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