More military aid arrives in Ukraine amid threat of imminent Russian invasion
U.S. estimates more than 130,000 Russian troops staged near Ukraine border
Some airlines cancelled flights to the Ukrainian capital and troops there unloaded fresh shipments of weapons from NATO members on Sunday, as its president sought to project confidence in the face of U.S. warnings of possible invasion within days by a growing number of Russian forces.
President Volodymyr Zelensky spoke to U.S. President Joe Biden for about an hour on Sunday, insisting that Ukrainians had the country under "safe and reliable protection" against feared attack by a far stronger Russian military, aides said afterward. The White House said the leaders agreed to keep pushing both deterrence and diplomacy to try to stave off a feared Russian military offensive.
The Biden administration has become increasingly outspoken about its concerns that Russia will stage an incident in the coming days that would create a false pretext for an invasion of Ukraine
U.S. and European intelligence findings in recent days have sparked worries that Russia may try to target a scheduled Ukrainian military exercise slated for Tuesday in Eastern Ukraine to launch such a "false-flag operation," according to two people familiar with the matter. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about it
American intelligence officials believe targeting the military exercise is just one of multiple options that Russia has weighed as a possibility for a false-flag operation. The White House has underscored that officials do not know with certainty if Russian President Vladimir Putin has made a final determination to launch an invasion.
A U.S. official updated the Biden administration's estimate on how many Russian forces are now staged near Ukraine's borders to more than 130,000, up from the more than 100,000 the U.S. has cited publicly in previous weeks. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the administration's conclusions.
Zelensky's repeated statements playing down the U.S. warnings — while Moscow's forces surround Ukraine on three sides in what the Kremlin insists are military exercises — grew this weekend to his questioning the increasingly strident statements from U.S. officials in recent days that Russia could be planning to invade as soon as midweek.
"We understand all the risks, we understand that there are risks," he said in a live broadcast. "If you, or anyone else, has additional information regarding a 100 per cent Russian invasion starting on the 16th, please forward that information to us."
'Always be ready for everything'
But while Zelensky has urged against panic that he fears could undermine Ukraine's economy, he and his civilian and military leaders are also preparing defences, soliciting and receiving a flow of arms from the U.S. and other members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
A military cargo aircraft carrying U.S.-made Stinger anti-aircraft missiles and ammunition from NATO member Lithuania landed on Sunday, bolstering the country's defences against any attack by air.
Zelensky wore military olive drab at a drill with tanks and helicopters near Ukraine's border with Russian-annexed Crimea this weekend. In the nearby city of Kalanchak, some expressed disbelief that Putin would really send the troops poised along Ukraine's borders rolling into the country.
"I don't believe Russia will attack us," said resident Boris Cherepenko. "I have friends in Sakhalin, in Krasnodar," he said, naming Russian locations. "I don't believe it."
In Kyiv, others expressed uncertainty whether any Russian move would be economic, military or happen at all. One woman, Alona Buznitskaya, speaking on a central street of the capital bearing a few signs declaring, "I love Ukraine," said she was calm.
"You should always be ready for everything, and then you will have nothing to be afraid of," she said.
Moscow denies intentions of attacking
The U.S. has largely not made public the evidence it says is underlying its most specific warnings on possible Russian planning or timing.
"We're not going to give Russia the opportunity to conduct a surprise here, to spring something on Ukraine or the world," Jake Sullivan, the U.S. national security adviser, told CNN on Sunday, about the U.S. warnings.
"We are going to make sure that we are laying out for the world what we see as transparently and plainly as we possibly can," he said.
The Russians have deployed missile, air, naval and special operations forces, as well as supplies to sustain an invasion. This week, Russia moved six amphibious assault ships into the Black Sea, augmenting its capability to land on the coast.
Putin denies any intention of attacking Ukraine. Russia is demanding that the West keep former Soviet countries out of NATO. It also wants NATO to refrain from deploying weapons near its border and to roll back alliance forces from eastern Europe — demands flatly rejected by the West.
Biden and Putin spoke for more than an hour on Saturday, but the White House offered no suggestion that the call diminished the threat of an imminent war in Europe.
Reflecting the West's concerns, Dutch airline KLM has cancelled flights to Ukraine until further notice, the company said. The Ukrainian charter airline SkyUp said Sunday its flight from Madeira, Portugal, to Kyiv was diverted to the Moldovan capital.
And Ukraine's air traffic safety agency Ukraerorukh issued a statement declaring the airspace over the Black Sea to be a "zone of potential danger" and recommended that planes avoid flying over the sea from Feb. 14 to 19.
High-level talks
The Putin-Biden conversation, following a call between Putin and French President Emmanuel Macron earlier in the day, came at a critical moment for what has become the biggest security crisis between Russia and the West since the Cold War. U.S. officials believe they have mere days to prevent an invasion and enormous bloodshed in Ukraine.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz will fly to Kyiv on Monday and Moscow on Tuesday to meet with the presidents in those capitals.
While the U.S. and its allies in NATO have no plans to send troops to Ukraine to fight Russia, an invasion and resulting punishing sanctions could reverberate far beyond the former Soviet republic, affecting energy supplies, global markets and the power balance in Europe.
Preparing for a worst-case scenario, the U.S. announced plans to evacuate most of its staff from the embassy in Kyiv and urged all American citizens to leave Ukraine immediately. Britain joined other European nations in telling its citizens to leave. Canada has also closed its embassy in the capital and relocated its diplomatic staff.
Biden has bolstered the U.S. military presence in Europe as reassurance to allies on NATO's eastern flank. The 3,000 additional soldiers ordered to Poland come on top of 1,700 who are on their way there. The U.S. army is also shifting 1,000 soldiers from Germany to Romania — which, like Poland, shares a border with Ukraine.
Russia and Ukraine have been locked in a bitter conflict since 2014, when Ukraine's Kremlin-friendly leader was driven from office by a popular uprising. Moscow responded by annexing the Crimean Peninsula and then backing a separatist insurgency in Eastern Ukraine, where fighting has killed more than 14,000 people.
A 2015 peace deal brokered by France and Germany helped halt large-scale battles, but regular skirmishes have continued, and efforts to reach a political settlement have stalled.