Prescience or preventive dramatization? It will be necessary to wait a few days, even a few weeks, to put definitive words on the appearance out of standard of Jake Sullivan in the press room at the White House, Friday, February 11. The national security adviser came in person to issue a new alert, even more alarmist than the previous ones, regarding the Russian military threat hanging over Ukraine.
An operation “might start during the Olympics [de Pékin, qui s’achèveront le 20 février] », said Jake Sullivan, mentioning the arrival of “new forces” near the border. The adjective « imminent is making a comeback in the official vocabulary, following being neglected for a while. The American adviser recognizes, in the same movement, that the United States does not know if Vladimir Putin has made a final decision, and in what sense.
“Things might get crazy fast,” explained, Thursday evening, Joe Biden on the NBC channel. The American president and his Russian counterpart must speak once more by telephone on Saturday, following another conversation, between Vladimir Poutine and Emmanuel Macron. While contacts are multiplying at an unprecedented rate between allies, the diplomatic room for maneuver to avoid a military escalation seems to be reduced. Thursday in Berlin, the failure of the discussions in the Normandy format between the French, German, Ukrainian and Russian representatives, only consolidated the differences of approach regarding the Donbass, a region in the hands of the separatists controlled by Moscow.
The White House is therefore taking a further step in denouncing Russian intentions, since the start of the massive military deployment on the border in November 2021. The national security adviser renewed official warnings regarding “the creation of a pretext”by Russia – an incident attributed to the Ukrainians – to justify a military operation.
Usually, operational assumptions are recorded in confidential notes. The Biden administration makes them public arguments, but without revealing the precise content, the substantiated origin. Mr. Sullivan thus evoked the possible seizure of sections of Ukrainian territory, large cities, and even “a rapid assault on the city of Kiev”the capital.
The specter of the chaotic evacuation from Afghanistan
Such an undertaking would be disastrous in terms of civilian casualties, economic and political followingshocks. It would probably be badly perceived by the Russian public, in the name of family and cultural ties between the two peoples.
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