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Biden said he is preparing measures to raise the cost of any new invasion for Putin,who has dismissed the US warnings as rumours and said Russia is not threatening anyone.
“What I am doing is putting together what I believe to be,will be the most comprehensive and meaningful set of initiatives to make it very,very difficult for Mr Putin to go ahead and do what people are worried he may do,” Biden said on Friday.
The Russian military moves come as Moscow has raised eyebrows in Washington with a sudden mobilisation of reservists this year and a dramatic escalation of its rhetoric regarding Ukraine.
Russian officials have defended the reserve mobilisation as a necessary measure to help modernise the Russian armed forces. But the administration official raised concerns about the “sudden and rapid program to establish a ready reserve of contract reservists,” which the official said is expected to add an additional 100,000 troops to the approximately 70,000 deployed now.
The intelligence about a potential surge in forces bolsters a warning earlier this week from Blinken that Putin could quickly order an invasion of Ukraine and helps explain why Biden administration officials have been sounding alarms about the threat of imminent invasion for weeks.
“We don’t know whether President Putin has made the decision to invade. We do know that he is putting in place the capacity to do so on short order should he so decide,” Blinken told reporters in Europe a day before meeting Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. “We must prepare for all contingencies.”
Lavrov,in public comments this week,echoed Putin’s warnings about US military equipment and activity encroaching on Russia’s borders. “The nightmare scenario of military confrontation is returning,” he said.
The intelligence document also suggests that Russian forces may be leaving equipment behind at training facilities to allow an attack on Ukraine to commence quickly.
“Equipment may be left behind at different training ranges to enable a rapid,final buildup,” the document adds.
While laying the groundwork for an invasion,the Russian government has also been waging a propaganda campaign,the US administration official said.
“Recent information indicates that Russian officials proposed adjusting Russia’s information operations against Ukraine to emphasise the narrative that Ukrainian leaders had been installed by the West,harboured a hatred for the ‘Russian world,’ and were acting against the interests of the Ukrainian people.”
In his comments in Latvia,Blinken cautioned the Ukrainians not to give Russia a pretext for military action. “We’re also urging Ukraine to continue to exercise restraint because,again,the Russian playbook is to claim provocation for something that they were planning to do all along,” he said.
Putin has demanded the United States and its allies provide signed assurances excluding any expansion of NATO to include Ukraine and Georgia and limiting military activity near Russia’s borders,most notably in and around Ukraine.
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White House press secretary Jen Psaki rejected out of hand the idea that Washington would provide a guarantee that Ukraine will not enter NATO.
“NATO member countries decide who is a member of NATO,not Russia,” Psaki told reporters during a White House briefing on Friday.
“That is how the process has always worked and how it will proceed. I think it’s important to remember where the provocative action is coming from. It’s not the United States. It’s not Ukraine.”
The Washington Post