US President Joe Biden said in prepared remarks on Feb. 18 that intelligence sources had confirmed that Russian President Vladimir Putin has made a decision to invade Ukraine in the coming days. He ominously warned that attacks would center on the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv.
“As of this moment, I am convinced that he’s made a decision,” Biden said, speaking from the White House to a national audience.
For weeks, the US and NATO have watched carefully as Russia amassed troops on three sides of Ukraine, but until this latest statement, Biden and other NATO leaders readily admitted that they had no evidence that Putin had decided to attack.
During the past week, Russian troop levels at Ukraine’s borders have quickly increased from 150,000 to 190,000, and Russia staged war ships in the Black Sea, while military exercises with Belarus, which borders Ukraine on the north, also took place.
US leaders have sought to warn that a sign that a Russian attack was imminent would be the onset of false flag operations, conjured scenarios by which the Kremlin and Putin could claim they were entering Ukraine to protect ethnic Russians.
US officials said that the provocations could range from a series of staged attacks against ethnic Russians to the invented discovery of fake mass graves.
Artillery attacks from the Russian-controlled territory of the Donbas into Ukraine have significantly increased in recent days, and Russian state media has dedicated a good portion of its news programming to showing that the US is provoking Russia.
On Feb. 17, the leaders of the two Russian-supported separatist entities announced that they were evacuating women and children to Russia in advance of what they said would be a Ukrainian attack. Russian TV widely covered the scenes of busses leaving for Russia.
CNN reported that one of the announcements by the leader of the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) was, in fact, recorded on Feb. 16.
In his White House address, Biden urged the Kremlin to continue negotiations for a diplomatic settlement.
“It is not too late to return to the negotiating table,” Biden said. “There is always hope for a diplomatic solution until Putin attacks.”
He added that US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov were scheduled to meet on Feb. 24 if a Russian invasion had not occurred by then.
Appearing alongside Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenka on Feb. 18, Putin said that he was ready to draw down troops just as soon as the government of Ukraine engaged with the DPR and the neighboring breakaway region, the Luhansk People’s Republic, to negotiate a peaceful solution to the conflict there.
Ukraine has repeatedly stated that it would never meet with the representatives of the two Russian-backed breakaway republics, as this would essentially be a recognition that they are legitimate governments.
