The United States and its allies issued increasingly strident warnings about an imminent Russian incursion into Ukraine, but officials in Moscow dismissed the alarm as “the peak of hysteria”.
Authorities in Kyiv appeared unfazed for the moment, with Ukraine’s president urging his countrymen not to give into panic despite the mass presence of Russian troops on national borders — as the country had already endured eight years of conflict.
U.S. President Joe Biden spoke to Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin as more than 100,000 troops remained deployed on the border –according to Western and Ukrainian estimates. Some 30,000 Russian troops were taking part in exercises in Belarus – Moscow’s neighbouring ex-Soviet ally.
In his third conversation with the Russian president in two months, Biden said Washington would respond “decisively and impose swift and severe costs” if Russia moved into Ukraine.
“President Biden was clear that, if Russia undertakes a further invasion of Ukraine, the United States together with our Allies and partners will respond decisively and impose swift and severe costs on Russia,” the White House said after the hour-long call between the leaders.
“President Biden reiterated that a further Russian invasion of Ukraine would produce widespread human suffering and diminish Russia’s standing.” The United States, the statement said, remains prepared to engage in diplomacy, in full coordination with our Allies and partners, (but) we are equally prepared for other scenarios”.
The telephone call took place a day after U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan issued an alarm saying that “an invasion could begin at any time, should Vladimir Putin decide to order it” and told Americans in Ukraine to leave within 48 hours.
Sullivan even described how an attack might be launched, saying it “is likely to begin with aerial bombing and missile attacks that could obviously kill civilians without regard to their nationality”.
U.S. officials say such an invasion, eight years after Russia annexed Crimea and fomented a rebellion in eastern Ukraine by Kremlin proxies, could be undertaken even before the end of the Beijing Olympic Winter Games on 20th February. Official sources in the United States and Europe named 16th February as a possible starting date for a military advance.
Russia denies it has any intention of invading Ukraine but is seeking “security guarantees” from the West, including an undertaking that NATO will expand no further and that Ukraine will never be allowed to join. The United States and NATO reject both notions as an attempt to dictate terms to Russia’s neighbours but have offered talks on disarmament and issues like transparency on military manoeuvres.
The United States sent an additional 3,000 troops to Poland at the end of last week, bringing the total number of new forces dispatched to close to 6,000 in recent weeks.
Western diplomatic initiatives
Western countries have launched several diplomatic initiatives in the past week, notably French President Emmanuel Macron, who spent five hours in the Kremlin – Putin described some of his proposals as “feasible”. The Kremlin leader spoke to Macron again at the weekend, dismissing accusations of an imminent attack on Ukraine as “provocative speculation”.
German Chancellor Olaf Sholz is due to visit Moscow and Kyiv this week.
In Moscow, the Kremlin’s top foreign policy advisor, Yuri Ushakov, said after the latest conversation between Biden and Putin: “Hysteria has reached its peak.”
Ushakov complained about the U.S. claims, saying that Washington had even released “the date of the Russian invasion…We don’t understand why false information about our intentions is being passed to the media” .
Putin, he told a conference call, had complained that the West continued to provide Ukraine with arms and that Kyiv was “sabotaging” Western peace initiatives.
At the same time, he also described the talks as “balanced and business-like” and added that “the presidents have agreed to continue contacts at all levels”.
British Defence Secretary Ben Wallace, meanwhile, said Putin could send troops into Ukraine “at any time” and appeared to discount efforts to find a diplomatic solution to the crisis, suggesting they were as doomed in the same way that such attempts were before the outbreak of World War Two,
“It may be that he (Putin) just switches off his tanks and we all go home, but there is a whiff of Munich in the air from some in the West,” Wallace told the Sunday Times. That was a reference to British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlin’s statement that the 1938 Munich agreement, which failed to prevent Nazi Germany from advancing into eastern Europe, would bring “peace for our time”.
Ukraine’s ambassador to Britain immediately criticised the analogy as unhelpful in the light of the buildup of Russian troops.
“It’s not the best time for us to offend our partners in the world, reminding them of this act which actually did not bring peace but the opposite – it brought a war,” Vadym Prystaiko told the BBC.
“Too much information” – Zelensky
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, watching Kyiv’s own military exercises in the south of the country, restated his concern in recent weeks that Western warnings about impending Russian military activity were harming the country, its morale and its economy.
“I believe that at the moment there is simply too much information about a comprehensive full-scale war coming from Russia. Even dates have been provided,” Zelensky told reporters.
“If someone among you has additional information about a 100 percent sure invasion, please give it to us… I’ve said it before. This could happen any day…I have to speak to our people as president and tell them the truth. What is certainly true is that we all have different information. And at the moment, the best friend of our enemies is panic in the country. All this information is only provoking panic and not helping us.”
In a conversation lasting just under an hour on Sunday, Biden offered Zelensky new assurances of U.S. backing for Ukraine’s territorial integrity and support in the face of any further Russian actions.
The United States was among more than a dozen countries that have urged their citizens to leave Ukraine and withdraw diplomatic staff or send them away from Kyiv to western Ukraine, considered safer than the capital.
Moscow’s deployment in the Belarus manoeuvres has involved bringing in forces normally based in far away Russian regions, including eastern Siberia. Russian officials have said the troops will return to base once the exercises are over, but Western nations have cast doubts on that assurance.
Russia has also been preparing for drills in the Black Sea, denounced by Ukraine as “an abuse of international law”, but Moscow has said all its exercises were lawful with proper notice given.
In his comments during the past week, Putin was slightly more conciliatory, telling reporters that negotiations with the West were continuing over Russia’s demands to alter European security arrangements.
At one point, Macron told reporters last week that one of the options under consideration was “Finlandisation” for Ukraine – a Cold War term under which Finland agreed to a strictly neutral foreign policy but was allowed to maintain its democratic institutions and independence. That would rule out Ukrainian membership of NATO.
Macron later denied making any such suggestion and said the best path for resolving the conflict was to stick to the Minsk accords – signed in 2014 and 2015 when Ukraine was under intense pressure from armed Russian proxies in Donbas. The accords call for restored Ukrainian control over its border with Russia but with conditions, including a loosening of central control, that many in Ukraine say would give Russia undue control over its affairs.
France is the main advocate of the “Normandy” format – including Russia, Ukraine, France and Germany as participants – to resolve the Donbas conflict, which has killed 14,000 since 2014. Diplomats from the four countries held “Normandy” talks in Berlin last Thursday, but no serious progress was reported.
Zelensky came to office in 2019 vowing to clinch a peace deal with Putin, but now says Ukrainian membership of NATO is the only way to solve his country’s problems. Putin refuses to discuss Donbas with Zelensky, saying Ukraine is in the grip of a “civil war” and telling the president to speak directly to separatists holding large chunks of territory, a demand rejected outright by Kyiv authorities.