WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden said Friday that the United States believes that Russian President Vladimir Putin has decided to carry out an attack on Ukraine “in the coming days.”
“We have reason to believe the Russian forces are planning and intend to attack Ukraine in the coming week, in the coming days,” Biden said in remarks at the White House. “We believe that they will target Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, a city of 2.8 million innocent people.”
The stunning revelation comes as an extraordinary number of Russian forces advance on Ukraine’s northern and eastern flank.
The increased military presence mimics Russia’s playbook ahead of its 2014 illegal annexation of Crimea, a peninsula on the Black Sea, which sparked international uproar and triggered sanctions against Moscow.
The Biden administration has previously declined to predict Putin’s playbook even as Russia has deployed nearly half of its military to Ukraine’s borders. When asked, Biden said that there was still time for Putin to choose a path of diplomacy.
In his second address this week, Biden reiterated U.S. commitment to defending NATO allies should the crisis on Ukraine’s border with Russia spill over into an all-out war.
“The United States and our allies are prepared to defend every inch of NATO territory from any threat to our collective security,” Biden said, evoking the alliance’s Article 5 rule.
A cornerstone of the 30-member alliance is the principle of collective defense, known as Article 5, which states that an attack on one NATO country is an attack on all allies.
The Kremlin has denied that the more than 150,000 Russian troops outfitted with advanced military equipment along Ukraine’s borders are preparing for an invasion.
Biden said that while he would not commit to sending U.S. troops to Ukraine, he would approve troop deployments to NATO member countries. Earlier on Friday, Biden ordered more U.S. troops and military equipment to Hungary, a NATO ally that borders Ukraine.
Earlier on Thursday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned that the renewed Russian aggression against Ukraine will disrupt not only European security but the world’s international order of maintaining peace.
“What’s at stake is, first yes, the lives and wellbeing of Ukrainians, but what’s at stake are larger principles that are the foundation of the entire international order,” explained America’s top diplomat during a panel discussion at the Munich Security Conference.
“Those principles are being challenged right now by Russia in Ukraine, principles like you can’t change the borders of another country by force, principles like you can’t dictate to another country its choices, its decisions, its policies including with who they associate, principles like you cannot exert a sphere of influence to subjugate neighbors to your will,” Blinken added.
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