- According to US President Joe Biden, Russia is planning an early attack on Ukraine and also on its capital Kiev.
- Biden said in the White House on Friday that he was “convinced” that Russian President Vladimir Putin made the decision to invade neighboring Ukraine.
- Meanwhile, according to international observers, ceasefire violations in eastern Ukraine are increasing massively.
“We have reason to believe that the Russian military is planning and planning to attack Ukraine in the coming week, in the coming days,” Biden said. And he added: “We believe they will attack the Ukrainian capital of Kiev, a city of 2.8 million innocent people.”
The US government is speaking so openly about Russia’s plans to thwart Moscow’s efforts to attack Ukraine under a pretext, Biden said. If Russia should go ahead with its plans, it would be responsible for a “catastrophic” and self-initiated war.
Among other things, Russia is trying to use false information to create a pretext for an attack on Ukraine. So far, the US government has always emphasized that it does not know whether Putin made a decision to invade Ukraine.
Hundreds of ceasefire violations
In the region, where Western-armed Ukrainian government forces and Russian-backed separatists are facing each other, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) mission registered hundreds of cases of shelling, even though a ceasefire was supposed to be in place. The parties to the conflict blame each other for the violations.
Meanwhile, evacuations from towns and villages in the Luhansk and Donetsk regions continue. The separatist leaders had called for people to flee and justified the appeal with an imminent attack by Ukrainian government troops. The Ukrainian military had said it was not planning an offensive against the region.
Another meeting in Geneva?
The US government again warned of dramatic economic consequences in the event of an invasion of Ukraine. Deputy White House National Security Advisor Daleep Singh said that should Moscow decide to invade the neighboring country, Russia would become isolated from global financial markets and lose access to cutting-edge technologies. “The cost to Russia would be immense,” Singh warned.
Legend:
US President Joe Biden is now convinced of a Russian invasion of Ukraine.
key stone
According to the White House, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken wants to meet his Russian colleague Sergey Lavrov again next week because of the crisis. The USA continues to rely on a diplomatic solution to the conflict, but it is still unclear whether the Russians want to negotiate seriously. According to US media, the meeting could take place in Geneva. The two ministers last met there at the end of January.
Joe Biden emphasized the unity of the West towards Putin. “Despite Russia’s efforts to divide us at home and abroad, I can confirm that this has not happened,” Biden said. On Friday he spoke to US congressmen at the security conference in Munich and to western heads of state and government. The “overwhelming message” of both talks was that of unity and determination.