The
Biden administration said Wednesday it fears Russian forces may be on the verge of entering
Ukraine to “rehash” the chaos that resulted in
Moscow’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, warning the Kremlin that the U.S. and its allies are committed to helping
Ukraine defend itself.
The sharp messaging comes days after President
Biden dispatched
CIA Director
William Burns to
Moscow for talks with Russian officials in part over its ongoing troop buildup along the Ukrainian border, although U.S. officials have yet to specify how they’ll respond if
Russia invades
Ukraine.
Moscow claims it is only responding to a U.S. and NATO buildup of military forces on
Russia‘s western border.
The region has proven to be a tinderbox with
Russia supporting pro-
Moscow separatists fighting the
Ukraine government and moving closer to the regime of Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko as he clashes with his neighbors over human rights and a growing border crisis.
Secretary of State
Antony Blinken stopped short of saying the
administration is prepared to respond with force, but stressed at a joint press conference with visiting Ukrainian Foreign Minister
Dmytro Kuleba on Wednesday that any further Russian escalation “will be of great concern to the United States.”
“We’re concerned by reports of unusual Russian military activity near
Ukraine,” Mr.
Blinken told reporters at State Department headquarters.
“We don’t have clarity on
Moscow’s intentions, but we do know its playbook,”
he said. “Our concern is that
Russia may make the serious mistake of attempting to rehash what it undertook back in 2014, when it amassed forces along the border, crossed into sovereign Ukrainian territory and did so claiming falsely that it was provoked.”
“If there are any provocations that we’re seeing, they’re coming from
Russia with these movements of forces that we see along
Ukraine‘s borders,” the secretary of state added. “Our commitment to
Ukraine‘s sovereignty, to its independence, to its territorial integrity, is ironclad and the international community will see through any Russian effort to resort to its previous tactics.”
Pentagon spokesman John Kirby struck a similar note in his Wednesday briefing, saying the U.S. military is monitoring the tensions along the Belarus border “very closely,” a Pentagon spokesman said Wednesday.
“We don’t want to see any actions further destabilize what is already a very tense part of the world,” chief Pentagon spokesman John Kirby told reporters. “We urge
Russia to be clear about their intentions and abide by the Minsk agreement.”
The Minsk Protocol was drawn up by representatives of
Ukraine,
Russia, and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe to end the fighting in the disputed Donbas region of
Ukraine. Although the measure failed to stop the conflict, it remains the basic framework for any future resolution.
The buildup of Russian troops is “unusual” because of its size and scope, Mr. Kirby said. He declined to offer an intelligence estimate of what type of forces are being sent to the area near
Ukraine‘s border.
Meddlesome policy
The
Biden administration’s stepped-up pressure on
Moscow comes in response to what U.S. and European analysts describe as President Vladimir Putin’s increasingly meddlesome foreign policy. National security analysts have long warned that Mr. Putin, who has held power in
Moscow for more than two decades, is pursuing a revanchist foreign policy aimed at reclaiming the Kremlin’s influence over former Soviet states such as
Ukraine, Georgia and Belarus.
Many in Western Europe are warning that Mr. Putin seeks to exploit Minsk’s growing isolation to establish a base for sowing chaos in the region through expanding destabilization operations against the democracy-oriented powers of the European Union.
EU officials on Wednesday accused Belarus of engaging in an evolving “hybrid attack” by luring desperate migrants to the country’s border with Poland, where many are now stuck in makeshift camps in freezing weather. Polish authorities estimate that about 3,000 to 4,000 migrants have gathered along its border with Belarus — the edge of the border with the EU — in recent weeks.
The West has accused President Lukashenko of encouraging migrants from the Middle East to travel to his country and sending them on to EU members Poland, Lithuania and Latvia, as a way to retaliate against the bloc for sanctions imposed on the authoritarian regime for its crackdown on internal dissent since a disputed election in 2020.
Many in the region say the developments involving migrants, as well as a widening energy crisis across Western Europe, can all be traced back to
Moscow, which denies it is exploiting its dominance over natural gas and oil markets as a political tool to exert influence over the region.
Ukraine in particular has been vocal about the need for clear signs of support from Washington and the EU to counter what it says is a multifaceted pressure campaign orchestrated by
Moscow.
“We should all understand that what is unfolding in Europe now is a very complicated game with many elements in it — energy crisis, propaganda efforts, disinformation, cyberattacks, military buildups, an attempt of
Russia to digest Belarus [and] elements of [a] migration crisis,” Mr.
Kuleba said Wednesday.
“We have to remain vigilant,” the Ukrainian foreign minister said. “We have to be resilient.”
The
Biden administration’s approach has thus far centered heavily on
Ukraine — a country that has long been a friction point between the West and post-Soviet
Russia, and whose battles with corruption have become interwoven with U.S. domestic politics in recent years.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited the White House in September, completing a circle of politics and intrigue spanning three U.S. administrations.
It was an infamous phone call with Mr. Zelenskyy in July 2019 in which President Trump pressed him to investigate Biden family corruption in
Ukraine that led to Mr. Trump’s first impeachment. The episode also brought the far-flung business dealings of Mr. Biden’s son Hunter
Biden into the spotlight.
Biden administration officials have sought to re-focus U.S.-Ukrainian ties on security cooperation. During the September meeting, the White House issued a statement announcing “a new $60 million security assistance package, including additional Javelin anti-armor systems and other defensive lethal and non-lethal capabilities, to enable
Ukraine to more effectively defend itself against Russian aggression.”
Ukraine has more recently claimed about 90,000 Russian troops are stationed not far from the Ukrainian border — a build-up that has stirred fears that
Moscow may be trying to amp up its support for the separatist insurgency in
Ukraine’s east that erupted shortly after
Moscow’s 2014 annexation of
Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula.
Russia has repeatedly denied any presence of its troops in eastern
Ukraine, where clashes between rebels and U.S.-backed Ukrainian military forces have left more than 14,000 people dead over the past seven years.
Despite the
Biden administration’s heightened rhetoric, it remains to be seen how the White House will ultimately respond if
Russia invades
Ukraine.
Assistant Secretary of State for Europe and Eurasia Karen Donfried says senior Russian officials have been warned of potential consequences for any increased threat to
Ukraine’s security. While she would not discuss specifics, administration officials have suggested boosting military support for
Ukraine is one option. Ms. Donfried was part of
CIA Director
Burns‘ delegation to
Moscow last week.
“Any time we see unusual Russian military activity near
Ukraine we make clear that any escalatory or aggressive action is of great concern to the United States,”
she told The Associated Press. “We’re very clear that we support
Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity and that our commitment to that has not changed … and we will condemn any Russian aggression against
Ukraine in all its forms.”
With Mr.
Blinken echoing those statements on Wednesday, Mr.
Kuleba said Ukrainian officials are “grateful for the readiness of the United States to expand cooperation with
Ukraine.”
“The best way to deter aggressive
Russia,”
he said, “is to make it clear for the Kremlin that
Ukraine is strong, but also that it has strong allies that will not leave it on its own in the face of
Moscow‘s ever increasing aggressiveness.”
• S.A. Miller, Mike Glenn and Jeff Mordock contributed to this article, which is based in part on wire service reports.
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