Evidence Vladimir Putin is planning invasion of Ukraine, says Antony Blinken

The Russian President says he wants ‘concrete agreements’ from NATO that it would not expand eastwards.

Antony Blinken in Riga on Wednesday. Picture: AFP

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Wednesday that Washington had seen “evidence” Russia could be planning an invasion on Ukraine, threatening Moscow with painful economic sanctions if it attacks.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, for his part, said he wanted “concrete agreements” from NATO that it would not expand eastwards.

Mr Blinken accused Moscow of massing “tens of thousands of additional combat forces” near Ukraine’s border as he geared up for talks with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov in Stockholm over the crisis.

“We’re deeply concerned by evidence that Russia has made plans for significant aggressive moves against Ukraine, plans include efforts to destabilise Ukraine from within as well as large scale military operations,” he said after a meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Latvia’s capital Riga. “Now, we don’t know whether President Putin has made the decision to invade. We do know that he’s putting in place the capacity to do so on short order, should he so decide.”

Mr Blinken insisted “diplomacy is the only responsible way to resolve this potential crisis” but warned there would be “far-reaching and long-lasting consequences” for Moscow if it pushed ahead with any aggression.

“We made it clear to the Kremlin that we will respond resolutely, including with a range of high-impact economic measures that we’ve refrained from using in the past,” he said.

Kiev’s Western allies have been sounding the alarm since last month over a fresh Russian troop build-up around Ukraine’s borders and a possible winter invasion. Russia, which seized Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 and backs separatists fighting Kiev, has strongly denied it is plotting an attack and blames NATO for fuelling tensions. Moscow hit back by accusing Ukraine of massing tens of thousands of troops in the country’s east.

Mr Putin also called for talks with the West aimed at providing “legal guarantees” against NATO’s further eastward expansion. “In our dialogue with the US and its allies, we will insist on developing specific agreements that would exclude any further NATO moves east and the deployment of weapons systems that threaten us close to Russian territory,” he said.

“We propose to start substantive negotiations on this.”

For his part, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called for direct talks with Moscow over the festering conflict with Russian-backed separatists in the east of his country.

“We must tell the truth that we will not be able to end the war without direct talks with Russia,” Zelensky said during an annual address to lawmakers in Kiev.

More than 13,000 people have been killed in a war that began in 2014 between Ukraine and pro-Russian separatists, who have carved out two “People’s Republics” in eastern Ukraine.

AFP