Biden Warning on Russian Attack Was Prompted by New Intelligence: --Ukraine Live Updates:
The American president stepped up his warnings about Moscow’s plans after seeing evidence that an attack on Ukraine was imminent.
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Here’s what you need to know:Intelligence that the Kremlin ordered an invasion prompted the latest Biden warning, officials say.
U.S. intelligence learned last week that the Kremlin had given the order for Russian military units to proceed with an invasion of Ukraine, information that prompted President Biden to announce that President Vladimir V. Putin had made the decision to attack, U.S. officials said.
Officials declined to describe the intelligence in any detail, anxious to keep secret their method of collecting the information. But intelligence officials have told the administration they have a high level of confidence in the intelligence they have collected in recent months about Russian military planning, as well as about plots by Moscow’s intelligence agencies to try and create a pretext for war.
The administration’s trust in the intelligence has only grown as the world watched the Russian military take steps that American spy agencies had predicted.
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“Everything leading up to the actual invasion appears to be taking place,’’ Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said on Sunday, appearing on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “All of these false-flag operations, all these provocations to create justifications — all that is already in train.”
Still, an official cautioned that the Kremlin has developed multiple war scenarios, and it is not clear yet exactly how an attack on Ukraine might play out, including how quickly, for example, Russian forces might move on Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine.
On Friday, Mr. Biden intensified his warning, saying he was “convinced” that Mr. Putin had made the decision to invade and that an attack could commence in the coming days. “We have a significant intelligence capability,” Mr. Biden said.
Mr. Biden’s declaration, and the new description of what he based it on, are the latest salvos in a campaign by the administration to use declassified intelligence to expose and disrupt the Kremlin’s plans, perhaps slowing an invasion and buying more time for diplomacy.
But American military and intelligence assets have confirmed that they have observed the Russian military take steps to execute an attack plan.
The new intelligence reveals that 40 to 50 percent of the more than 150,000 Russian forces surrounding Ukraine have moved out of staging and into combat formation and could launch a full-scale invasion within days, U.S. officials said Friday. Some of the forces are Russian reservists who would make up an occupation force after an invasion, officials said.
While officials said the early stages of an attack are playing out now, with stepped-up shelling and accusations of Ukrainian provocations, the exact steps the Russian military will take next are not clear. Until Russian tanks roll across the border, Mr. Putin could change his mind and order his military to stand back.
Despite the intelligence showing Mr. Putin has made the decision to attack, senior administration officials said that the window for diplomacy still had not closed and that the Russian leader could still pause his invasion plan.
A senior defense official said the outlook is very gloomy, with combat forces at the ready and Russian reservists gathering near the border.
“Russia has been building up its military forces in and around Ukraine, including in Belarus,” Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III said Friday in Warsaw. “They are uncoiling and now poised to strike.”
Information about the intelligence was earlier reported by CBS News and The Washington Post.
On Sunday, Russia extended their military exercises in Belarus, a move European intelligence officials had predicted. American intelligence officials have told the White House that last week Russia continued to build its forces in Belarus.
Attacking from Belarus is a scenario U.S. officials have warned of for weeks. The Ukraine-Belarus border, they noted Friday, is far more lightly protected than the border in Ukraine’s far east, near Russia and separatist-controlled parts of the Donbas. Belarus also offers a shorter route to Kyiv. By: Julian E. Barnes and Eric Schmitt
Satellite images show a new phase of Russian military readiness.
Satellite imagery collected this weekend shows an apparent shift in Russia’s military deployment around Ukraine. In contrast to the large-scale deployments visible in imagery over recent weeks, some smaller deployments are now visible. Several units or troops have been deployed outside of bases or training grounds, with some positioned along tree lines, according to an analysis by Maxar Technologies, who released the imagery.
Russian units are also continuing to move closer to the border with Ukraine. Videos shared on social media in recent days showed military vehicles being moved.
Most of these locations are in the Belgorod area in western Russia, 25 miles from the border, which has recently seen an increase in military activity. In addition to the movement of vehicles, a new helicopter landing site was established over the last two weeks.
The Visual Investigations team at The Times, as well as outside researchers, have been tracking military activity in the region. However, the area has been cloudy for days, making it difficult to collect traditional satellite imagery. But there were few clouds around Belgorod on Sunday. New imagery revealed fresh tracks in the snow, leading analysts who pored over the images to focus on small deployment sites near the tree line.
The new findings come after U.S. intelligence officials claimed that 40 to 50 percent of the more than 150,000 Russian forces surrounding Ukraine have moved out of staging and into combat formation.
Experts who have been watching Russia’s recent military movements have paid special attention to the Belgorod region. Rochan Consulting, which tracks Russian deployments, stated in its Feb. 19 newsletter that “if Russia decides to attack, the Belgorod-Valuyki line will be one of the major staging areas for operations against Ukraine.”
The Maxar analysis noted that most of the combat units and equipment at Soloti, a military garrison outside the city of Valuyki, have left and that “extensive vehicle tracks and some convoys of armored equipment” have been seen in the area. By: Christoph Koettl
An estimated 30,000 Russian troops will stay longer in Belarus, bordering Ukraine.
Russia’s large-scale military deployment in Belarus, which the United States has long warned could be used as a pretext to build an invasion force aimed at Ukraine, will be extended beyond Sunday, when joint exercises had been scheduled to conclude, Belarus’s defense minister announced.
After repeated assurances from Russia and Belarus that the drills would end this weekend as planned, the Belarusian defense minister said on Sunday that the two countries’ militaries would continue to “test” their capabilities because of what they claimed were heightened tensions in eastern Ukraine.
The apparent extension of the exercises — which NATO has said involve 30,000 Russian troops, Moscow’s largest deployment on Belarus territory since the end of the Cold War — put further pressure on Ukraine, which shares a roughly 665-mile border with Belarus that is largely unguarded.
Belarus’s defense minister, Lt. Gen. Viktor Khrenin, cited an escalation of violence in eastern Ukraine as the reason for continuing the exercises, although Ukrainian officials say Russia-backed separatists are responsible for the increase in tensions.
On Sunday, separatist leaders suspended a wide range of public activities in the eastern region, known as the Donbas, according to a statement posted on their Telegram channel.
The statement released by the self-proclaimed government in the region offered no evidence that there was a danger to the public.
And it was part of an ominous shift in the long-running conflict in the Donbas, where the Russia-backed rebels in recent days have called for civilians to evacuate to Russia and for residents to take up arms against a possible invasion by Ukraine. Ukraine has denied plans to invade, and Western officials have described the separatists’ claims as lies intended to justify a military intervention by Moscow.
General Khrenin said on Sunday that because of “the growing military activity on the external borders of the Union State and the exacerbation of the situation in the Donbas, the presidents of Belarus and Russia have made the decision to continue the inspection of reaction forces.”
The union state, until recently a largely aspirational entity, refers to a merged state comprising Russia and Belarus that was initiated in 1997 but has recently begun to take on a concrete form as Russia has subordinated the Belarusian military and other state structures to its effective command.
General Khrenin did not elaborate on what tests would be carried out, or how long they would last. But his remarks indicated Russian troops would not be leaving Belarus, at least not immediately.
As part of the exercises dubbed “Allied Resolve,” which began on Feb. 10, Russia has deployed some of its most advanced and well-equipped forces to nine different bases and airfields around Belarus, according to Russia’s defense ministry. These include highly trained special forces units and airborne troops, together with powerful S-400 antiaircraft systems and hundreds of aircraft, tanks and armored vehicles. Some are stationed within just a few hundred miles of Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv.
The announcement on Sunday appeared to represent a reversal from earlier statements. Belarus’s foreign minister, Vladimir Makei, assured journalists last Wednesday that “not a single Russian serviceman and not a single piece of Russian military hardware will remain after these maneuvers.” Also last week, the Kremlin’s spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, said that Russia’s keeping troops in Belarus after the exercises “is not being considered.”
From the time the exercises were announced in January, Western officials have warned that the Kremlin could be using them to deploy forces for a possible invasion of Ukraine. Last month, Jens Stoltenberg, the NATO secretary general, warned that Russia had in the past used military exercises as a cover for preparing for military action, including before Russian troops seized the Crimean Peninsula in 2014.
“We’ve seen it many times before, that exercises, high readiness of forces as part of an exercise, is used as a disguise to launch an attack,” Mr. Stoltenberg said. By: Michael Schwirtz and Andrew Higgins.
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