US President Joe Biden says he is “convinced” that Russian President Vladimir Putin has decided to attack Ukraine, he said Friday during a press conference. “I’m convinced he made the decision. We have reason to believe so. We believe they will target Kyiv, a city of 2.8 million innocent people,” he added. Joe Biden also said he expected a Russian attack on Ukraine in the coming days.
For the American president, Russia wants to create a “false justification” for a war against Ukraine. Mr Biden accused Moscow of waging a disinformation campaign, including accusing Kiev of planning an attack on Russia, to find a pretext to invade its neighbor.
“There is simply no evidence to support these assertions and it belies all logic to think that the Ukrainians would choose when they have 150,000 (Russian) troops deployed on their borders to choose escalation in this conflict which has been going on for years,” he noted.
“All of these events correspond to a scenario that Russia has used in the past, which is to create a false justification to act against Ukraine,” added the American president. “If Russia carries out its plans, it will be responsible for a catastrophic and useless war, which it will have chosen”.
Despite an increasingly tense situation, “it’s not too late”, launched Joe Biden to Russia. The American president has confirmed that the head of American diplomacy Antony Blinken will meet his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov on Thursday in Europe in order to defuse the situation.
If Russia invades Ukraine by then, it will have “slammed the door on diplomacy”, he warned, however.
Mr. Biden also wondered if it would be “wise” for President Volodymyr Zelensky to leave Ukraine currently to go to an international conference, believing that it was up to him to make this decision.
“In a quest for a diplomatic outcome, it might not be, it might be the wisest option, but the decision is up to him,” Biden said without deciding clearly, as the question arises whether Mr. Zelensky is going to the Munich Security Conference, which brings together many international leaders until Sunday.
“40% of Russian forces in attack position”, according to a Pentagon official
More than 40% of Russian forces massed on Ukraine’s borders are now in an attack position, a Pentagon official said on Friday, noting that the Russian-led destabilization phase of the country had “begun”. The United States, which estimates the number of Russian troops now deployed in northern, eastern and southern Ukraine at more than 150,000, has been observing Russian troop movements towards the border since Wednesday, the official said. from the US Department of Defense who requested anonymity.
“40 to 50% are in attack position. They have deployed to tactical assembly points in the last 48 hours,” he told some reporters.
Tactical assembly points are areas close to the front line where a military unit musters before launching an offensive.
The official said that Moscow had 125 army battalions near the Ukrainian borders on Friday, compared to 60 in normal times and 80 in early February.
The multiplication of clashes between pro-Russian separatists and Ukrainian forces, the inflammatory statements by pro-Russian and Kremlin leaders on the situation in the Russian-speaking regions of Donbass and Lugansk correspond to the “campaign of destabilization of Ukraine (which) is underway” , according to this official.
Washington has been warning for weeks that Russia will cause an incident on the Ukrainian border to justify an invasion of Ukraine.
Russia denies any plan of invasion but demands guarantees for its security such as the withdrawal of NATO from Eastern Europe, all demands rejected by the West.
Moscow, in addition to its support for armed separatists, has already annexed Ukrainian territory, Crimea in 2014.
Macron will meet Sunday with Putin: “We must avoid the worst”
French President Emmanuel Macron will speak by telephone with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin on Sunday and on Saturday with Ukrainian Volodymyr Zelensky to try to “avoid the worst” in Ukraine, the Elysee Palace said on Friday evening.
French President Emmanuel Macron will speak by telephone with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin on Sunday and on Saturday with Ukrainian Volodymyr Zelensky, to try “again to avoid the worst” in Ukraine, the Elysee Palace said on Friday evening.
IT is necessary “to try everything, to do everything so that the worst does not happen”, hammered the French presidency, evoking a “risk of a Russian invasion of Ukrainian territory under the control of the government” of Kiev, and not only of the pro-Russian separatist territories in eastern Ukraine.
“We believe that we still have the possibility of dissuading President Putin from carrying out the attack on Ukraine”, noted an adviser to Emmanuel Macron after a telephone exchange between the heads of state and government of major Western countries.
The exchange brought together American Joe Biden, Canadian Justin Trudeau, Ursula von der Leyen (President of the EU Commission), Charles Michel (President of the Council of the EU), Italian Mario Draghi, Jens Stoltenberg (NATO chief), German Olaf Scholz, Polish Andrzej Duda, Romanian Klaus Johannis, Briton Boris Johnson and Emmanuel Macron.
“We must try everything to avoid a confrontation which will be destabilizing for the security of the European continent, for Russia, for the European partners, will put us in another geostrategic configuration if by chance Russia invades Ukraine”, continued the ‘Elysium.
Westerners do not observe “no withdrawal of Russian forces” stationed at the gates of Ukraine, contrary to announcements made for several days by Russia, the French presidency insisted.
President Putin’s visit scheduled for Saturday to Belarus, Ukraine’s neighbor, where joint maneuvers are continuing, is “rather signals of escalation than de-escalation”, she added.
France has “no doubt” that the cyberattacks hitting Ukraine “come from Russia”, she also noted.