Russian invasion of Ukraine ‘only days away’, world warned
Full-scale war between Russia and Ukraine will start ‘within days’, Joe Biden says.
Full-scale war between Russia and Ukraine will start “within days”, Joe Biden has claimed, as Secretary of State Antony Blinken rushed to New York to tell the UN the US believed the invasion was “unfolding, right now, today”.
In the strongest warning from the US yet that Russia plans to follow through with a feared invasion of Ukraine, the US President and Mr Blinken dismissed Russia’s claims from earlier in the week that it had begun to withdraw some of its up to 150,000 troops stationed on the Ukraine border.
“They have not moved any of their troops out. They’ve moved more troops in,” Mr Biden said on the White House lawn on Thursday before boarding a flight to Ohio, adding that he expected invasion “within the next several days”.
Later at Joint Base Andrews outside Washington he said “every indication we have is they’re prepared to go into Ukraine”, revealing he had received but not yet considered Russia’s formal response to a US letter sent three weeks ago that proposed areas of potential negotiation.
The US President’s comments came just hours before the Kremlin announced Vladimir Putin would on Saturday oversee drills involving Russian “strategic forces” that would include ballistic and cruise missile launches.
A Kremlin spokesman, without saying from where the cruise missiles would be launched, dismissed suggestions the move was a further provocation, saying it was a “fairly regular training process”.
Delaying a planned trip to Germany, Mr Blinken flew to New York, where he demanded Russia withdraw its forces and renounce any intention to invade Ukraine, proposing a meeting in Europe next week with Russia’s veteran Foreign Minster, Sergey Lavrov.
“Our information indicates clearly that these [Russian] forces including ground troops, aircraft, ships are preparing to launch attack against Ukraine in coming days,” Mr Blinken told the security council, laying out the series of events the US was expecting in coming days.
Mr Blinken predicted Russia would shortly invent an excuse to invade Ukraine, an “outrageous” accusation or a “false-flag” operation that it would blame on Ukraine’s government, which had recently sought to downplay the likelihood of Russian invasion.
“It could be a fabricated ‘terrorist bombing’ inside Russia, invented discovery of ‘mass graves’, a staged drone strike against civilians, fake or even real attack using chemical weapons,” Mr Blinken said.
Separately, the Wall Street Journal reported violence escalating in eastern Ukraine, as Russian-backed separatists and authorities in Kyiv traded accusations over ceasefire violations along the frontline separating the two sides.
A kindergarten and a school in Ukrainian-held towns were hit by mortar shells, according to the Ukrainian army and local residents. Authorities in separatist areas said mortar attacks had also damaged several buildings in towns.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who was visiting frontline troops in the eastern Donetsk region, described the damage to the schools as a “big provocation” by pro-Russian forces.
The US last week ordered most of its diplomatic staff to leave Ukraine and urged Americans remaining to leave as soon as possible, following a series of US decisions to send thousands of additional troops from the US to eastern Europe to bolster NATO defences.
“Second, in response to this manufactured provocation, the highest levels of Russian government may theatrically convene emergency meetings to address the so-called crisis, issuing proclamations to protect ethnic Russians,” Mr Blinken said.
“Next, Russian missiles and bombs will drop across Ukraine, communications will be jammed, cyberattacks will shut down key Ukrainian institutions and after that Russian tanks and soldiers will advance on key targets already identified and mapped out,” he added, suggesting one of those targets would be Kyiv, the nation’s capital of 2.8 million people.
In Moscow, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was quoted by Russian state news agency TASS blaming Ukraine for increasing tensions, saying: “It’s clear that the situation in the Donbas is ramping up. The situation at the borders of Russia may ignite at any moment.”
Mr Blinken finished his nine-minute speech by urging the Russian government to renounce “today with no qualification, equivocation or deflection” any plans to invade Ukraine.
“State it clearly and plainly to the world and then demonstrate it by sending your troops, your tanks and your planes back to their barracks and hangars and sending diplomats to the negotiating table,” Mr Blinken said.
The intensifying geopolitical tensions weighed on stocks and bond yields in New York on Thursday. The benchmark US index S&P 500 fell 1.4 per cent, while the tech-focused Nasdaq Composite Index dropped 1.6 per cent.
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