Biden Says He's 'Convinced' Putin Has 'Made the Decision to Invade Ukraine' in Coming Days
22:06 GMT 18.02.2022 (Updated: 23:37 GMT 18.02.2022)
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The self-declared people's republics of Lugansk and Donetsk announced on Friday plans to evacuate more than 700,000 civilians to western Russia amid a significant increase in bombardment of the area by Ukrainian forces.
US President Joe Biden said on Friday that he was "convinced" Russian President Vladimir Putin had made the decision to launch an invasion of Ukraine "in the coming days."
“As of this moment I’m convinced he’s made the decision," Biden told reporters at the White House. He confirmed his position when a reporter asked him to do so. He said the attack will focus on the capital of Kiev.
When asked by reporters how his administration has such firm information after having waffled on making such a firm determination for months, Biden said “we have a significant intelligence capability" and abruptly ended the press conference.
The US has claimed for months that a Russian invasion of Ukraine was "imminent," and numerous predictions have come through the media alleging to pinpoint the exact date and even the time the attack would begin. Moscow denies it has plans to attack Ukraine and even the Ukrainian government says the Russian forces deployed near its borders are insufficient to pose a threat to them.
Biden's comment mirrors a dispute between US State Department spokesperson Ned Price and reporters earlier this month, who demanded evidence of the administration's claims the Russians were planning a "false flag" incident that would serve as a casus belli for invading Ukraine.
Biden renewed that accusation as well on Friday, claiming that information coming out of the Donbass about a significant increase in artillery and mortar shelling by Ukrainian forces, as well as other explosions of an unknown origin, were just the kind of staged Russian provocations his administration had been "warning about for weeks."
“All these are consistent with the playbook the Russians have used before," Biden declared.
He said that a Ukrainian offensive against the Donbass republics now "defies basic logic" and that Ukrainian forces had shown "restraint" by refusing to be "baited" by Russian forces. He did not elaborate as to what incidents amounted to baiting.
However, Biden said he did not believe the pre-scheduled nuclear drills being observed by Putin this weekend are an indicator the Russian president intends to use nuclear weapons in the allegedly forthcoming invasion.
“How much of it is a cover for saying ‘we’re just doing exercises' … it’s hard to read his mind," Biden said.
The US president said "Russia can still choose diplomacy, it is not too late to de-escalate and return to the negotiating table." Indeed, both Moscow and Kiev have made clear their intention to continue negotiations, and NATO has, to a certain degree, considered parts of the security guarantees first proposed by Moscow in December. However, Washington has remained intransigent, and NATO has refused to reconsider its policy of eastward expansion that could one day lead to Ukrainian membership in the alliance.
"The military-political situation in Europe continues to degrade. Russian proposals on security guarantees are aimed at correcting this situation, to which we have not received a clear answer from the alliance," Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said in a Friday statement.
"We hope that negotiations on them will continue. We will insist on NATO stopping its provocative expansion policy, refusing to deploy strike weapons that threaten us near our borders, and returning the configuration of the alliance's forces to the positions of 1997," she added.
