Biden says Putin all set for it, 40% of Russian troops in attack position
United States President Joe Biden warned a Russian invasion of Ukraine will happen in the coming days as a US defense official said more than 40 percent of Moscow’s forces on the Ukraine border are now in position for attack.
Biden said he is “convinced” that Vladimir Putin has decided to invade Ukraine within the week, an event that would trigger Western sanctions set to turn Russia into what a US official called a “pariah.”
“As of this moment I’m convinced he’s made the decision,” Biden said in televised remarks at the White House.
Biden said the attack could come in the next “week” or “days” and that targets would include the capital Kyiv, “a city of 2.8 million innocent people.”
The United States, which estimates that Russia has placed more than 150,000 troops near Ukraine’s borders, has observed significant movements since Wednesday, the US Defense official said, insisting on anonymity.
“Forty to fifty percent are in an attack position. They have uncoiled in tactical assembly in the last 48 hours,” the official told reporters.
Tactical assembly points are areas next to the border where military units are set up in advance of an attack.
The official said Moscow had massed 125 battalion tactical groups close to the Ukraine border, compared to 60 in normal times and up from 80 at the beginning of February.
Ukraine’s army on Saturday reported the first death of a soldier in weeks as the Moscow-backed leaders of Ukraine’s two breakaway regions announced a general mobilization, with fears mounting of war in the ex-Soviet country.
The joint military command for east Ukraine said a soldier received a fatal shrapnel wound in the conflict zone running across two separatist regions near the Russian border.
Ukraine’s emergency service said two of its staff were wounded during a wave of attacks on Friday.
The announcements from the separatist groups came after observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe reported a significant rise in attacks on the frontline in parts of eastern Ukraine controlled by pro-Russian rebels.
“I urge my fellow citizens who are in the reserves to come to military conscription offices. Today I signed a decree on general mobilization,” Denis Pushilin, the leader of the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic, said in a video statement.
The leader of the Lugansk separatist region, Leonid Pasechnik, meanwhile published a decree saying the measure in his region was signed to prepare for “repelling aggression.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was due to travel to Germany Saturday to meet Western leaders, with talks between him and US Vice President Kamala Harris expected.
Putin, for his part, will oversee major military drills along Ukraine’s borders on Saturday, further escalating tensions in the area, but the Kremlin continues to say it has no plans to attack.
NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg, attending the Munich Security Conference, warned the size of the assembled Russian force far exceeded that needed for military drills, and that Russia had the capacity to invade without warning.
Russia will only get a bolstered NATO on its borders if its aim in a possible invasion of Ukraine was to push the alliance away from its frontier, the defense bloc’s chief Jens Stoltenberg warned Saturday.
“If the Kremlin’s aim is to have less NATO on its borders, it will only get more NATO,” vowed Stoltenberg, speaking at the Munich Security Conference.
The alliance “will take all necessary measures to protect and defend all our allies,” he vowed.
France and Germany have urged Russia to use its influence on rebels in Ukraine’s disputed east to “encourage restraint and contribute to de-escalation.”
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said Friday there was “still a chance to avoid unnecessary bloodshed” even as Downing Street said Russia continued to strengthen its forces massed on Ukraine’s borders.
“There is still a chance to avoid unnecessary bloodshed, but it will require an overwhelming display of Western solidarity beyond anything we have seen in recent history,” Johnson said in a statement.
“Allies need to speak with one voice to stress to President Putin the high price he will pay for any further Russian invasion of Ukraine. Diplomacy can still prevail.”
But on the ground, a spike in clashes has fed a growing sense of dread.
Officials told local media that 25,000 people had left Lugansk and more than 6,000 had left Donetsk for Russia. There were reports of long car queues at checkpoints in Donetsk.
A Russian region bordering Ukraine declared a state of emergency on Saturday citing growing numbers of people arriving from separatist-held areas in Ukraine after they received evacuation orders.
“Given the trend of increasing numbers of people arriving, we consider it appropriate to introduce a state of emergency,” the Rostov region’s
governor Vasily Golubev said in a meeting, according to Russian news agencies.
Seeking to reverse the aggressor narrative, Moscow-backed leaders have accused Kyiv of planning an offensive to retake the eastern territories. The evacuations of civilians there were said to be in response to worries about a government attack.
In 2014, Russia invaded and occupied the Crimea region of Ukraine, making use of sympathetic separatists.