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The U.S. and its allies in Europe are responding to Russian President Vladimir Putin‘s latest moves in the Ukraine crisis and condemning steps taken toward war as the “beginning of an invasion.”
On Monday, Putin signed a decree to recognize two separatist sections of Ukraine, Donetsk and Luhansk, as independent states and ordered troops to those territories for what the Kremlin called a “peacekeeping mission.”
Putin’s support for the breakaway territories — which have been the site of ongoing insurrectionary fighting — is not recognized by the international community. Nonetheless, he said, he wasn’t backing down.
“Ukraine has never had traditions of its own statehood,” he said in a grievance-laced speech on Monday, in which he claimed the eastern part of the country as “ancient Russian lands.”
In recent months, Russia has amassed more than 150,000 troops along various portions of its 1,200-mile border with its Eastern neighbor.
“We think this is, yes, the beginning of an invasion, Russia’s latest invasion into Ukraine, and you are already seeing the beginning of our response that we said will be swift and severe,” White House Deputy National Security Advisor Jonathan Finer said on CNN Tuesday.
Not long after Putin’s speech, President Joe Biden signed an executive order to prohibit U.S. economic activity in the regions of Ukraine that Putin declared independent.
But the White House said that order is “distinct” from the promised sanctions that would come from a full-scale invasion of Ukraine — a possibility that has seemed to grow increasingly likely.
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“To be clear,” a senior Biden administration official told reporters Monday, “these measures respond to Russia’s recognition gambit; they are not the swift and severe economic measures we have been preparing in coordination with Allies and partners should Russia further invade Ukraine.”
A chief foreign policy official for the European Union, Josep Borrell, said Tuesday that Russian troops have entered Donbas, the region where Donetsk and Luhansk are located, according to The New York Times.
“I wouldn’t say it is a fully fledged invasion,” Borrell hedged, “but Russian troops are on Ukrainian soil.”
Finer told CNN on Tuesday that “an invasion is an invasion,” but he clarified that Russia has been “occupying large pieces of Ukraine since 2014.” That’s when the Kremlin seized the Crimean Peninsula.
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Finer also said that later Tuesday the administration will announce additional sanctions that “go directly at Russia in response to the egregious step that they took yesterday away from diplomacy and down the further path toward war.”
Germany’s Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced Tuesday that the U.S. ally will halt the certification of Nord Stream 2, a major natural gas pipeline that links the country with Russia via the Baltic Sea, in response to Putin’s decree.
President Biden “made clear that if Russia invaded Ukraine, we would act with Germany to ensure Nord Stream 2 does not move forward,” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said in a tweet Tuesday. “We have been in close consultations with Germany overnight and welcome their announcement. We will be following up with our own measures today.”
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Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky remained defiant in an address to his nation on Tuesday, saying that Russia has violated the country’s “national integrity and sovereignty” and insisting that its borders will “remain as such,” CNN reports.
“We are on our land. We are not afraid of anything and anyone. We don’t owe anything to anyone, and we willnot give away anything to anyone,” Zelensky said.
The senior Biden administration official, who spoke to reporters on Monday, agreed that Putin’s speech was “an attack on the very idea of a sovereign and independent Ukraine” and repeated the U.S. belief that Russia is seeking — even preparing — an excuse to invade the country.
“He made clear that he views Ukraine historically as part of Russia, and he made a number of false claims about Ukraine’s intentions that seemed designed to excuse possible military action,” the official said, referring to Putin. “This was a speech to the Russian people to justify a war. In fact, he once again explicitly threatened one.”
Though officials around the world are carefully parsing words to describe what’s unfolding in Ukraine, none would say that Russia’s moves are surprising.
On Friday, President Biden said he was “convinced” that Russian President Putin had made a decision to invade and that he would be “responsible for a catastrophic and needless war of choice.” It would mark the first major armed conflict in Europe in decades.
“Russian troops currently have Ukraine surrounded — from Belarus, along the Russian border with Ukraine, to the Black Sea in the south — and all of its border,” Biden told reporters at the White House. “We have reason to believe the Russian forces are planning to and intend to attack Ukraine in the coming week — in the coming days. We believe that they will target Ukraine’s capital, Kiev, a city of 2.8 million innocent people.”
Earlier in the week, Russia claimed it was drawing back some of its 150,000 troops from the border with Ukraine and its defense ministry released a video that showed armored vehicles on the move, according to NBC News.
But U.S. officials quickly countered that. “They have not moved any of their troops out. They’ve moved more troops in,” Biden said Thursday morning. “We have reason to believe that they are engaged in a false-flag operation to have an excuse to go in. Every indication we have is they’re prepared to go into Ukraine and attack Ukraine.”
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke at the United Nations on Thursday and described what else could be done on Russia’s part to spark outrage and create an appearance of legitimacy for an attack.
“This could be a violent event that Russia will blame on Ukraine or an outrageous accusation that Russia will level against the Ukrainian government,” Blinken said. It could be a “fabricated so-called terrorist bombing inside Russia, the invented discovery of a mass grave, a staged drone strike against civilians … even a real attack using chemical weapons.”
“Russia may describe this event as ethnic cleansing or a genocide,” he added. “Russia media has already begun to spread some of these false alarms and claims to maximize public outrage to lay the groundwork.”
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The U.S. began preparing a response at the end of 2021, and Biden warned in January that an invasion by Russia would be the “most consequential thing that’s happened in the world, in terms of war and peace, since World War II.”
On Jan. 23, the U.S. called on diplomats and their families serving the largest country west of Russia to leave their posts in the capital, Kiev.
A day later, a Pentagon spokesman said up to 8,500 U.S. troops were put on heightened alert for a possible deployment to NATO allies in Eastern Europe and the Baltics, which would include warships and aircraft.
“The United States has taken steps to heighten the readiness of its forces at home and abroad, so they are prepared to respond to a range of contingencies, including support to the NATO response force if it is activated,” Department of Defense Press Secretary John Kirby said, adding that the NATO Response Force “comprises around 40,000 multinational troops.”
Biden said previously that ground troops were “not on the table.” On Friday, he reiterated that position. “The United States and our Allies are prepared to defend every inch of NATO territory from any threat to our collective security as well,” Biden said. “We also will not send troops in to fight in Ukraine, but we will continue to support the Ukrainian people.”
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Signs of U.S. willingness to respond quickly — and militarily — came after Biden warned at a press conference marking his first year in office that Putin has “never seen sanctions like the ones I promised will be imposed if he moves” into Ukraine.
“It depends on what it does. It’s one thing if it’s a minor incursion and then we end up having a fight about what to do and not do,” he added. But that caveat, which had some worrying it offered a green light to Putin, was clarified a day later.
“If any assembled Russian units move across the Ukrainian border, that is an invasion. But it will be met with severe and coordinated economic response that I’ve discussed in detail with our allies as well as laid out very clearly for President Putin,” Biden said. “Let there be no doubt at all that if Putin makes his choice, Russia will pay a heavy price.”
At the press conference, Biden also said he expected Putin to act in some form. “Do I think he’ll test the West, test the United States and NATO, as significantly as he can? Yes, I think he will,” the president told reporters. “But I think he will pay a serious and dear price for it that he doesn’t think now will cost him what it’s going to cost him. And I think he will regret having done it.”
Florian Gaertner/Photothek via Getty Vladimir Putin
In early December, the Washington Post reported that U.S. intelligence had determined the Kremlin was planning to invade its neighbor, a country of 44 million people that was once part of the Soviet Union.
“The Russian plans call for a military offensive against Ukraine as soon as early 2022 with a scale of forces twice what we saw this past spring during Russia’s snap exercise near Ukraine’s borders,” an administration official told the Post. “The plans involve extensive movement of 100 battalion tactical groups with an estimated 175,000 personnel, along with armor, artillery and equipment.”
Days later, U.S. President Joe Biden held a two-hour video call with President Vladimir Putin, warning the Russian leader that an invasion would result heavy penalties from the U.S. and its allies.
Mikhail Svetlov/Getty Images From left: Vladimir Putin and Joe Biden
“I was very straightforward. There were no minced words. It was polite but I made it very clear — if in fact they invade Ukraine, there will be severe consequences … economic consequences like none he’s ever seen or ever have been seen,” Biden told reporters Dec. 8.
Asked about sending ground troops, Biden said, “That is not on the table.”
“The idea that the United States is going to unilaterally use force to confront Russia invading Ukraine is not in the cards right now,” he added.
On Dec. 9, Biden spoke with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for 90-minutes in what a senior administration official described as a “very warm” call.
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“President Biden made very clear a continued U.S. commitment to Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” the official said. “The President shared a readout of his conversation with President Putin — including telling Zelenskyy, as he had told Putin, that if Russia further invades Ukraine, the U.S. and our European allies would respond with strong economic measures, provide additional defensive materiel to Ukraine, and fortify our NATO allies on the eastern flank with additional capabilities.”
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In a year-end press conference on Dec. 23, Putin blamed the U.S. and its allies for tensions over Ukraine and demanded assurances that an eastern expansion of NATO will halt and that no offensive weapons will be deployed in countries that neighbor Russia, NBC News reported.
“You are demanding guarantees from me,” Putin reportedly said. “You should be giving guarantees. And immediately, now.”
But Putin also said he has “seen a positive reaction” to Russia’s proposals, according to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and indicated that diplomacy would be at the forefront at the start of 2022.
“Our U.S. partners told us that they are ready to begin this discussion, these talks, at the very start of next year,” Putin reportedly said. “I hope that’s how it will all play out.”
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In addition to a desire to keep Ukraine from joining NATO, Putin is said to be driven by his goal of restoring Russia’s status as a great power alongside China and the U.S., which means taking over a country that once was part of the Soviet Union.
Following massive anti-Putin protests, the leader is reportedly also hoping to stir up nationalism following economic and pandemic-related challenges have left some Russians exhausted and fed up with the political realities of life under Putin.
“However Russia has chosen to handle things, we don’t plan to negotiate in public. It does not strike us as constructive or way that progress has been made in such diplomatic conversations in the past,” a senior Biden official told reporters after Putin’s year-end speech. “We are not going to respond to every proposal or comment that is made, including from the Russian President.”
