This website collects cookies to deliver better user experience. Cookie Policy
Accept
Sign In
The Wall Street Publication
  • Home
  • Trending
  • U.S
  • World
  • Politics
  • Business
    • Business
    • Economy
    • Real Estate
    • Markets
    • Personal Finance
  • Tech
  • Lifestyle
    • Lifestyle
    • Style
    • Arts
  • Health
  • Sports
  • Entertainment
Reading: Biden administration scrambles as Kremlin escalates again on Ukraine
Share
The Wall Street PublicationThe Wall Street Publication
Font ResizerAa
Search
  • Home
  • Trending
  • U.S
  • World
  • Politics
  • Business
    • Business
    • Economy
    • Real Estate
    • Markets
    • Personal Finance
  • Tech
  • Lifestyle
    • Lifestyle
    • Style
    • Arts
  • Health
  • Sports
  • Entertainment
Have an existing account? Sign In
Follow US
© 2024 The Wall Street Publication. All Rights Reserved.
The Wall Street Publication > Blog > Trending > Biden administration scrambles as Kremlin escalates again on Ukraine
Trending

Biden administration scrambles as Kremlin escalates again on Ukraine

Editorial Board Published January 18, 2022
Share
Biden administration scrambles as Kremlin escalates again on Ukraine
SHARE

The Biden administration’s scramble to prevent a Russian military invasion of Ukraine will shift into high gear Wednesday, with Secretary of State Antony Blinken visiting Kyiv to show support for the Ukrainian government before holding a high-stakes summit with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov later in the week.

The flurry of shuttle diplomacy comes as Russia and Belarus — another authoritarian former Soviet republic that Russian President Vladimir Putin has sought to draw into Moscow’s orbit in recent years — say they will begin holding joint military exercises near the Belarus-Ukraine border and not far from the borders of NATO members Poland and Lithuania.

With Russian military equipment rumbling into Belarus and further elevating regional tensions over Moscow’s separate massing of 100,000 troops along Russia’s border with Ukraine, U.S. officials warned that Mr. Putin has generated a “crisis” to justify a potential invasion akin to what he pulled off in 2014 when Moscow forcefully annexed the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine.

The Kremlin denies any plans to invade Ukraine and accuses NATO of sparking the crisis by moving its forces and arms nearer to Russia’s borders and refusing to rule out membership for former Soviet states such as Ukraine and Georgia. The Biden administration says it is Mr. Putin who is exacerbating tensions and making it hard to strike a diplomatic resolution.

“This includes moving Russian forces into Belarus over the weekend — this is neither an exercise nor normal troop movement,” a senior State Department official in Washington told reporters on a background conference call. “It is a show of strength designed to cause or give a false pretext for a crisis as Russia plans for a possible invasion. And let’s be clear: This is extremely dangerous. We are now at a stage where Russia could, at any point, launch an attack on Ukraine.

“We are very alert to everything that Russia is doing,” the official said. “The fact that we’re seeing this movement of forces into Belarus clearly gives the Russians another approach should they decide to take further military action against Ukraine. We are concerned across several dimensions about Russia creating a pretext for a possible invasion.”

The Biden administration has stopped short of outlining what action it is willing to take to prevent Mr. Putin from repeating the events of 2014. Administration officials have said only that Russia would face “massive consequences,” with the U.S. and its European allies likely to work together to impose severe sanctions on Moscow and ramp up the flow of military equipment to the Ukrainian army if Russia invades.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki underscored the urgency. “We’re now at a stage where Russia could at any point launch an attack in Ukraine,” she said. “What Secretary Blinken is going to do is highlight very clearly there is a diplomatic path forward.”

Putin’s plans

That path right now is not clear. The U.S. and Russia appear poised to continue wrestling over Ukraine, a fledgling democracy that has been a staging ground of geopolitical friction between Washington and Moscow since shortly after the early-1990s end of the Cold War.

U.S. officials say they have not concluded whether Mr. Putin plans to invade or whether the show of force is intended to squeeze security concessions without a conflict. Russia has brushed off NATO and U.S. pressure to withdraw its troops, saying Moscow has a right to deploy forces wherever it likes inside its territory.

Washington and its allies firmly rejected Moscow’s demands during a round of Russian-U.S. negotiations in Geneva and a related NATO-Russian meeting in Brussels last week. Administration officials say there is room to discuss demilitarization moves across Russia’s tense western border.

The White House announced Friday that U.S. intelligence officials had determined that a clandestine operation was underway to create a pretext for Russian troops to invade Ukraine.

Ms. Psaki told reporters that the intelligence findings indicated that Moscow was positioning operatives to conduct “a false-flag operation” in eastern Ukraine, where a Moscow-backed Ukrainian separatist movement has been battling the Western-backed Kyiv government for eight years. She said Russia is also laying the groundwork through a social media disinformation campaign that frames Ukraine as an aggressor preparing an imminent attack against the separatist enclave in eastern Ukraine.

The Putin government has rejected the White House accusations, while Russian troops massed near the Ukrainian border have engaged in fresh exercises that the Kremlin claims are purely defensive.

Mr. Lavrov told reporters in Moscow on Monday that the U.S. claims were “total disinformation.” He reaffirmed that Russia expects a written response this week from the U.S. and its allies to Moscow’s request for binding guarantees that NATO will not embrace Ukraine or any other former Soviet nations or station its forces and weapons in such nations.

Mr. Blinken is slated to hold a high-stakes summit with Mr. Lavrov on Friday in Geneva. The senior State Department official who briefed reporters Tuesday said the meeting will focus on testing “whether there is an opportunity for a diplomatic off-ramp” to the rising tensions over Ukraine.

Mr. Blinken is headed to Europe a week after Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman met with her Russian counterpart in Geneva as well as with NATO allies in a bid to tamp down tensions with Moscow.

“If Russia does decide to pursue further military aggression, if it chooses to further escalate, we have been working very closely and effectively with our allies and our partners to ensure that there would be massive consequences,” said the senior State Department official.

The department announced earlier Tuesday that Mr. Blinken was heading to Ukraine and then Germany before gathering with Mr. Lavrov. German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock was in Moscow on Tuesday for talks with the Russian foreign minister.

The new German government of Chancellor Olaf Scholz has hinted strongly that it would shut down the planned Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline linking Russia and Germany — a long-sought project for Mr. Putin — if Moscow moves against Ukraine.
 
State Department spokesperson Ned Price said Mr. Blinken would begin his trip in Kyiv, meeting with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba on Wednesday to “reinforce the United States’ commitment to Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.”

On Thursday, Mr. Blinken is set to travel to Berlin to “discuss recent diplomatic engagements with Russia and joint efforts to deter further Russian aggression against Ukraine, including allies’ and partners’ readiness to impose massive consequences and severe economic costs on Russia,” Mr. Price said.

• This article is based in part on wire service reports.

TAGGED:TrendingWall Street Publication
Share This Article
Twitter Email Copy Link Print
Previous Article Oil Prices Hit Seven-Year High on Rising Geopolitical Tensions Oil Prices Hit Seven-Year High on Rising Geopolitical Tensions
Next Article Microsoft to Buy Activision Blizzard Microsoft to Buy Activision Blizzard

Editor's Pick

I attempted Google’s new Search Dwell function and ended up debating an AI about books

I attempted Google’s new Search Dwell function and ended up debating an AI about books

Google’s new Search Dwell function lets customers maintain real-time voice conversations with an AI-powered model of Search The Gemini-powered AI…

By Editorial Board 6 Min Read
AI at Scale: Mohammed’s Revolutionary Architecture Behind the World’s Fastest Website Builder
AI at Scale: Mohammed’s Revolutionary Architecture Behind the World’s Fastest Website Builder

In an extraordinary technological breakthrough, Abdul Muqtadir Mohammed has fundamentally transformed how…

7 Min Read
Bobby Flay Pays Tribute to Anne Burrell: She was Unforgettable…
Bobby Flay Pays Tribute to Anne Burrell: She was Unforgettable…

Studying Time: 3 minutes Bobby Flay is the newest movie star to…

5 Min Read

Oponion

China’s Coal Addiction Runs Deeper Than Economics

China’s Coal Addiction Runs Deeper Than Economics

China has been catching a lot of flak for not…

November 14, 2021

Now it is the CDC’s flip to beg fired employees to please come again

It’s time to acknowledge that the…

March 7, 2025

The Spring Equinox: A Pure Reset

Yearly between March 19 and 21,…

March 4, 2025

‘The Masked Singer’: Who Is Woodpecker?

The identification of Woodpecker on The…

September 25, 2024

Australia Seeks to Make Social-Media Firms Liable for Users’ Defamatory Comments

SYDNEY—Australia said on Sunday that it…

November 28, 2021

You Might Also Like

Model With a Mission: In Conversation With Maurice Giovanni
EntertainmentTrending

Model With a Mission: In Conversation With Maurice Giovanni

There are models who simply wear clothes—and then there are models who wear the weight of experience, resilience, and purpose…

4 Min Read
Global Security and Health Resilience: How AI-Driven Systems Could Reinvent National Safety—And the Visionary Behind the Shift
Trending

Global Security and Health Resilience: How AI-Driven Systems Could Reinvent National Safety—And the Visionary Behind the Shift

By Sarah K. McMillan | Enspirers Inc Imagine a world where your Provider is just an algorithm, and why that…

7 Min Read
How AI Is Being Used to Enforce Modern Kleptocracy
LifestyleTrending

How AI Is Being Used to Enforce Modern Kleptocracy

The Evolution of Kleptocracy in the Age of AI Historically, kleptocratic systems relied on bureaucratic manipulation, political prejudice, and covert…

7 Min Read
We’ve Cracked the Code to Reality — And It Changes Everything
LifestyleTrending

We’ve Cracked the Code to Reality — And It Changes Everything

By Nat Marconi The Matrix is broken. Or maybe more accurately, it’s been decoded. A sequence—unlike anything we’ve ever seen—is…

4 Min Read
The Wall Street Publication

About Us

The Wall Street Publication, a distinguished part of the Enspirers News Group, stands as a beacon of excellence in journalism. Committed to delivering unfiltered global news, we pride ourselves on our trusted coverage of Politics, Business, Technology, and more.

Company

  • About Us
  • Newsroom Policies & Standards
  • Diversity & Inclusion
  • Careers
  • Media & Community Relations
  • WP Creative Group
  • Accessibility Statement

Contact

  • Contact Us
  • Contact Customer Care
  • Advertise
  • Licensing & Syndication
  • Request a Correction
  • Contact the Newsroom
  • Send a News Tip
  • Report a Vulnerability

Term of Use

  • Digital Products Terms of Sale
  • Terms of Service
  • Privacy Policy
  • Cookie Settings
  • Submissions & Discussion Policy
  • RSS Terms of Service
  • Ad Choices

© 2024 The Wall Street Publication. All Rights Reserved.

Welcome Back!

Sign in to your account

Lost your password?