Joe Biden warns Vladimir Putin of ‘swift and severe costs’ of invading Ukraine

In an hour long call, Joe Biden told his Russian counterpart the response by the US and its allies to an invasion of Ukraine will be decisive.

Servicemen from Russia and Belarus are holding joint exercises in what many believe could be a precursor for an invasion of Ukraine. Picture: AFP

President Joe Biden on Saturday threatened Vladimir Putin with immediate and severe sanctions should Russia invade Ukraine, in an emergency telephone call that came hours after reports emerged a Russian frigate had chased a US submarine out of Russian waters in the Pacific Ocean.

In a “professional and substantive” phone call that lasted over an hour, according to the White House, Mr Biden warned Mr Putin of “swift and severe costs” including grievous loss of its international standing should it live up to fears Moscow was poised to attack.

“President Biden was clear with President Putin that while the United States remains prepared to engage in diplomacy, in full co-ordination with our Allies and partners, we are equally prepared for other scenarios,” the White House said.

The fresh warnings came a day after US national security Jake Sullivan urged Americans to leave Ukraine within 48 hours and confirmation the US was sending another 3,000 troops from North Carolina bases to eastern Europe.

In this image released by the White House, US President Joe Biden speaks with Russian President Vladimir Putin from the presidential retreat in Camp David.

The US, which has around 80,000 troops stationed throughout Europe, also said it was transferring 160 US troops out of Ukrainian territory along with all but the most essential diplomatic staff amid new US intelligence suggesting Russia could invade as soon as Wednesday.

In a sign of growing tension between the two cold war superpowers, Russia, separately, accused Washington of breaking international law on Saturday and creating a national security threat after a Russian frigate allegedly chased a US submarine out of Russian territorial waters near the Kuril Islands, north east of Japan.

“The US submarine ... left Russian territorial waters at maximum speed,” the Russian defence ministry was quoted as saying by Reuters.

The crew of the Marshal Shaposhnikov frigate used “corresponding means” to force the submarine to leave Russian waters after the submarine refused to surface, the Russian defence ministry apparently said.

White House officials didn’t deny the claim in a briefing with reporters on Saturday, referring questions to the Pentagon, which hasn’t yet formally commented.

Mr Biden’s phone call was one of a series on Saturday, including from the US Secretaries of State and Defence to the Russian and European counterparts, and from Moscow to Paris where the Russian president spoke to Emmanuel Macron with a similarly ambivalent outcome.

“We see no indication in what President Putin says that he is going to go on the offensive,” an Elysee official told reporters after the two leaders spoke for nearly 90 minutes.

The US president canvassed some other ideas in the call, the White House said, to dissuade Mr Putin from invading Ukraine, without spelling out exactly what these were.

“There’s no fundamental change in the dynamic that’s been unfolding for several week,” a senior official said beyond an undertaking to keep communication lines open.

The US, its European allies, and Ukraine itself, have appeared at odds over the likelihood of an imminent Russian invasion, and over what to do about it if it occurs.

“Right now, the people’s biggest enemy is panic in our country. And all this information is only provoking panic and not helping us,” Ukraine’s president Zelensky said on Saturday.

Russia has amassed up to 130,000 troops along the Ukrainian border and recently began conducting training exercises with allied Belarus, but has repeatedly denied it intends to invade Ukraine.

Fighter jets fly in formation during joint exercises of the armed forces of Russia and Belarus as part of a military excercise at the Gozhsky firing range in the Grodno region, against the backdrop of tensions between the West and Russia over neighbouring Ukraine.

“We are not basing out assessment on what Russia is saying publicly we’re basing it on what we’re seeing with our own eyes: continual Russian build up and no meaningful interest in de-escalation,” the senior US official said.

“The transatlantic relationship is more closely aligned, NATO is stronger and more purposeful, and Russia is finding itself isolated from wider world and more dependent on China”.

Prior intelligence had suggested Russia wouldn’t invade Ukraine during the Beijing Winter Olympics, due to conclude on 20th February.

A spokesman for the Russian president Yury Ushakov accused the US of “an unprecedented ratcheting up of hysteria by American officials about the supposed inevitable invasion of Russia into Ukraine” in a statement after the two leaders spoke.

The US and allies have formally rejected Russian demands to promise never to let Ukraine, part of the Soviet Union until its collapse after the Cold War, become part of NATO, a group of 30 nations in a military pact since the end of the Second World War to deter Soviet aggression.

Russia has also demanded US and allied troops and military hardware be removed from nations on the Russian border.