(Washington, Stanitsa Luganska and Moscow) Joe Biden for the first time said he was “convinced” on Friday that Vladimir Putin had made “the decision” to invade Ukraine and that the multiplication of clashes was intended to create a “false justification to launch the offensive in “the week” or even “the days” to come.
Updated yesterday at 9:50 p.m.
“We think they will target Kiev, a city of 2.8 million innocent people,” added the American president in a speech from the White House.
But he left the door open to dialogue. As long as an invasion has not occurred, “diplomacy is always a possibility,” he said, announcing a meeting between his Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Thursday ” in Europe “.
To “avoid the worst”, Paris said for its part that French President Emmanuel Macron would speak on the phone with Vladimir Putin on Sunday, the day after a call with his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky.
“Cynical and cruel”
PHOTO MIKHAIL KLIMENTYEV, ASSOCIATED PRESS
Russian President Vladimir Putin
Fears of a Russian military intervention in Ukraine are at their height amid rising ceasefire violations since Thursday between pro-Russian separatists and Ukrainian forces who have been fighting since 2014 in eastern Ukraine. , in a conflict that has already killed more than 14,000 people.
The Russian state agency Ria Novosti reported two explosions, including that of an oil pipeline, in Lugansk, a city in this region held by the separatists.
And the authorities of the pro-Russian secessionist territories have ordered the evacuation of civilians to Russia.
“All of this is consistent with the strategy already used by the Russians in the past, which is to create a false justification for intervening against Ukraine,” President Biden said after another virtual meeting with his European and NATO allies. .
“It is cynical and cruel to use human beings as pawns to distract the world’s attention from the fact that Russia is building up its troops for an attack,” a spokesman for the Department of Defense said just before. American State.
PHOTO RUSSIAN MINISTRY OF DEFENSE VIA AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
In this photo released by the Russian Ministry of Defense, we see tanks on a train supposed to bring them back to Russia after exercises conducted with Belarus. Americans and Ukrainians claim that this is propaganda and that Russia continues to increase its forces near the Ukrainian border.
More than 40% of the Russian forces massed on Ukraine’s borders are now in an attack position, a Pentagon official said on Friday, noting that the country’s destabilization phase led by Russia had “begun”.
The United States, which estimates more than 150,000 Russian troops are now deployed in northern, eastern and southern Ukraine, has been observing Russian troop movements towards the border since Wednesday, it said. US Department of Defense official who requested anonymity.
“40 to 50% are in attack position. They have deployed to tactical assembly points for the past 48 hours,” he told some reporters.
Tactical assembly points are areas close to the front line where a military unit gathers before launching an offensive.
The official said that Moscow had 125 army battalions near the Ukrainian borders on Friday, compared to 60 in normal times and 80 in early February.
The multiplication of clashes between pro-Russian separatists and Ukrainian forces, the inflammatory statements by pro-Russian and Kremlin leaders on the situation in the Russian-speaking regions of Donbass and Lugansk correspond to the “campaign of destabilization of Ukraine (which) is underway” , according to this official.
Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin told ABC that President Putin had gathered the elements “necessary for a successful invasion”.
“I don’t think it’s a bluff,” he said, according to an excerpt broadcast Friday from an interview to be broadcast on Sunday.
“He has a number of options at his disposal and he could attack in a short time,” he said again from Poland, where he went to meet the American and Polish soldiers.
Putin accuses Kiev
The Russian president accused Kiev of fueling the conflict and noted a “worsening of the situation in the Donbass”, a region where the Ukrainian army has been fighting pro-Russian forces supported by Moscow for eight years.
“All Kiev has to do is sit down at the negotiating table with the representatives (of the separatists) of Donbass and come to an agreement,” he said, receiving his counterpart from Belarus and ally, Alexander Lukashenko.
The speaker of the lower house of the Russian parliament, Vyacheslav Volodin, assured that Russia would “defend” the “Russian citizens” who live in the separatist territories in Ukraine if their lives were “threatened”. “If war begins, Europe will become the theater of hostilities,” he warned.
The West unanimously promised Moscow devastating economic sanctions in the event of an invasion of Ukraine. They would make Russia a “pariah”, hammered an American official on Friday.
But Vladimir Putin again swept aside the threat: “The sanctions will be introduced no matter what. Whether there is a reason or not, they will find one, because their aim is to hinder the development of Russia”.
Withdraw or not?
Throughout the day, belligerents in eastern Ukraine accused each other of violating the truce and using heavy weapons.
In the afternoon, shelling was still heard in Stanitsa Luganska, a city under Ukrainian control, according to AFP journalists. She had already been targeted the day before by shots which notably hit a nursery school.
The separatist leaders of the Donetsk region and the neighboring “republic” of Lugansk have for their part announced an evacuation of civilians to Russia – but not of “men capable of holding a weapon”.
And the Russian president ordered the payment of 10,000 rubles (about $165) to each person leaving these areas. Russian television channels showed images of evacuations of children gathered in the courtyard of their orphanage.
As tensions rise on the ground, Russia again claimed on Friday to withdraw military units from the outskirts of Ukraine, without however convincing its opponents.
“That’s not happening,” replied Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov.
US Defense Minister Lloyd Austin even claimed that the Russian army was sending “more forces” and preparing for an intervention “by moving closer to the border, positioning troops, increasing their logistical capabilities”.
Russia denies any plan of invasion, but demands guarantees for its security, such as the withdrawal of NATO from Eastern Europe, as many demands rejected by the West.
At the same time, Washington and London have accused Moscow of being “responsible” for the latest cyberattacks that targeted official Ukrainian websites this week, despite the Kremlin’s denials.