Biden Convinced Putin Has Made Decision To Invade Ukraine
U.S. President Joe Biden has said that he believes that Russian President Vladimir Putin has decided to invade Ukraine, with the invasion expected to begin within the coming week or “the coming days”.
In an address made from the White House on Friday, Biden said that attacking Russian forces would likely target the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv. He condemned the possible invasion, saying that “if Russia pursues its plans, it will be responsible for a catastrophic and needless war of choice”. While he ruled out the deployment of American troops to fight in Ukraine, he said that the United States would continue to support Ukraine, noting recent deliveries of weapons for Ukraine’s military.
Following the address, Biden told reporters present that “as of this moment, I am convinced he’s made the decision” to invade Ukraine. “Yes, I did,” the president said, when pressed again on whether he believed that Putin had made the decision to conduct an invasion. However, Biden refused to rule out a diplomatic effort to avert the crisis, saying that “diplomacy is always a possibility”. When asked as to why he believed that “he is considering that option at all”, Biden merely said that “we have a significant intelligence capability” as he prepared to depart the room.
During the address, Biden said that claims in the Russian media claiming that Ukraine would be launching an offensive into parts of eastern Ukraine controlled by pro-Russian separatists lacked evidence and “defies basic logic”, given the presence of over 150,000 Russian troops bordering Ukraine. The president said that the reports were part of the Russian “playbook to set up a false justification to attack Ukraine”, in particular claims that a “genocide” was being carried out in the Donbas and attempts by Russian-backed separatists to blame their shelling of a kindergarten on Thursday on the Ukrainian military.
Prior to the address, Ukraine’s military intelligence service issued a warning that Russian special forces had planted explosives in several social infrastructure facilities in parts of Donetsk held by pro-Russian separatists. The service said that the explosives would be detonated to fake attacks that would be used for “destabilizing the situation”, urging local residents to avoid public transportation and stay at home. The warning came alongside statements by Ukrainian and American officials that the alleged bombing of a Russian-made military jeep near the headquarters of the self-declared Donetsk People’s Republic earlier on Friday was staged by separatists to increase tensions, with a State Department spokesperson telling CNN that it was a “false flag operation.”
The leaders of the separatist-run Donetsk People’s Republic and Luhansk People’s Republic had announced on Friday that they were conducting a mass evacuation of its citizens to Russia, alleging that an Ukrainian attack was imminent. However, metadata analysis of the video messages announcing the evacuations by The Insider and other open source investigators have found that the announcements appear to have been recorded on Wednesday, suggesting that the evacuations are also a deliberate escalation by the separatists.
The head of Ukraine’s armed forces, Lieutenant General Valerii Zaluzhnyi, has denied separatist claims of a planned Ukrainian offensive. In a video address uploaded to Facebook, Zaluzhnyi said that “Ukraine does not plan or conduct offensive operations. The only acceptable option for us to de-occupy our people and territory is political and diplomatic”, stressing that Ukraine was not considering any offensives due to the inevitability of significant civilian casualties. He also warned that Kyiv would not necessarily be able to rapidly rebut Russian propaganda in the coming days, urging listeners to only trust official statements from Kyiv.