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Civic Register
| 2.18.22

President Biden Says He’s ‘Convinced’ Putin Has Made the Decision to Invade Ukraine

How do you feel about Biden’s comments?

What’s the story?

  • President Joe Biden spoke at the White House Friday and said that the U.S. government believes Russian leader Vladimir Putin has decided to invade Ukraine in the coming days, a change from comments he and other officials made in recent weeks when they said it wasn’t clear Putin had decided to invade.
  • Biden said, “As of this moment, I’m convinced he has made the decision. We have reason to believe that.” He also pushed back on “phony allegations” and “fabricated claims” made by Russia against Ukraine as being “consistent with the playbook the Russians have used before: to set up a false justification to act against Ukraine.”
  • The president said that U.S. officials believe Russia will target Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, and that while there is “every indication” Russia is prepared to invade, “It is not too late to de-escalate and return to the negotiating table.”
  • Biden’s comments come as Russia has reportedly stepped up its military buildup near Ukraine’s border. While Russian officials have said in recent days they’ve begun to withdraw troops, open-source satellite images show otherwise and Western defense and intelligence officials have said Russian units have begun to leave staging areas into attack positions near the border.
  • Michael Carpenter, the U.S. Ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), said Friday that the U.S. assesses that “Russia probably has massed between 169,000-190,000 personnel in and near Ukraine as compared with about 100,000 on January 30.” Russia’s military buildup is “the most significant military mobilization in Europe since the Second World War” and includes troops in Russia near the border with Ukraine, in Belarus, and in occupied Crimea, in addition to Russian-backed separatists in the Donbas.
  • Secretary of State Antony Blinken is scheduled to meet with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, on Wednesday, February 24th unless Russia launches an invasion. Biden said “if Russia takes military action before that date, it will be clear that they have slammed the door shut on diplomacy.”

Russia Ramps Up Efforts to Create Pretext for Invading Ukraine

  • Russian officials have made false claims in recent days that Ukraine is preparing to invade the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine, which includes Donetsk and Luhansk, that has been occupied by Russian-backed separatists since 2014. They have also alleged that Ukraine is committing genocide against ethnic Russians in the Donbas, announced the discovery of mass graves, and accused Ukraine of preparing a chemical weapons attack against civilians ― claims which U.S. officials say are untrue and are being used to create a false narrative intended to justify a Russian invasion of Ukraine.
  • The OSCE, which serves as a multinational monitor on the ground in eastern Ukraine, announced Friday that in recent days it has “observed a dramatic increase” in the number of ceasefire violations in the Donbas, equal to the number of ceasefire violations reported before July 2020.
  • Russian officials and state media said that a pair of explosions on Friday in the Donbas region involving a car belonging to a separatist official and a gas pipeline were instigated by Ukraine. Ukraine’s intelligence agency announced Friday that it believes Russian special forces have planted explosives on infrastructure in the Donbas region to use as a pretext for an invasion.
  • Historically, Russia has used “false flag” claims of attacks on ethnic Russians or the country’s military to justify military interventions. Before the Soviet Union invaded Finland in the Winter War of 1939, Red Army troops shelled the Soviet village of Mainila but blamed the Finns and cited that as a casus belli (“occasion for war” in Latin) for attacking Finland days later. In 2008, Russia troops sent unmarked soldiers into the Republic of Georgia to foment unrest prior to an invasion. Similarly, the 2014 invasion of eastern Ukraine and illegal annexation of Crimea was preceded by claims of persecution against ethnic Russians in the region, and Russian special forces entered Ukraine disguised as local self-defense forces and seized government buildings.
  • The number of cyberattacks against Ukrainian infrastructure has increased in recent days, including banks, which the National Security Council has attributed to Russia’s GRU military intelligence service.
  • Videos released on Friday by Russian-backed separatists in the regions of Donetsk and Luhansk urging civilians to evacuate from the area were recorded on Wednesday according to metadata from the videos, indicating they were made to fabricate a pretext rather than in response to ongoing events. The Russian government has reportedly offered would-be evacuees money to get on buses out of the Donbas region.

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— Eric Revell

(Photo Credit: Biden: White House photo by Adam Schultz via Flickr / Public Domain | Putin: Kremlin via Wikimedia Commons / Creative Commons)