US President Joe Biden declared “total” unity among Western powers on Monday after crisis talks with European leaders on deterring Russia from an attack against Ukraine, while the Pentagon said that 8,500 US troops were put on standby for possible deployment to boost NATO.
“I had a very, very, very good meeting — total unanimity with all the European leaders,” Biden told reporters shortly after finishing a 1 hour, 20 minute videoconference with allied leaders from Europe and NATO.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said: “It is up to Russia to undertake visible de-escalation,” while NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenber warned of “severe costs” if there is “any further aggression” by Moscow against Ukraine.
Photo: EPA-EFE
Also on the call were the leaders of France, Italy, Poland and the EU.
Despite insisting he has no intention of attacking, Russian President Vladimir Putin has deployed about 100,000 troops close to Ukraine.
Moscow is demanding a guarantee that Ukraine, a former Soviet republic, never be allowed to join NATO, but the US and NATO have rejected the Russian demands and told Putin to withdraw from Ukraine’s borders.
In Washington, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said that a force of up to 8,500 US troops was on “heightened alert” for potential deployment to reinforce any activation of the NATO Response Force in the region, where there are growing fears of spillover from the Ukraine conflict.
“What this is about ... is reassurance to our NATO allies,” Kirby said. “It sends a very clear signal to Mr Putin that we take our responsibilities to NATO seriously.”
NATO also said it was sending jets and ships to bolster its eastern flank.
The tension helped fuel instability in global markets, while Russia’s main stock index plunged and the central bank suspended foreign-currency purchasing after the ruble slumped.
The French government announced that Russian and Ukrainian officials would meet, along with their French and German counterparts, in Paris today to try to find a way out of the impasse.
Yesterday, British Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs Liz Truss said that she would visit Ukraine next week.
“I’ll be visiting Ukraine next week,” Truss told the British parliament.
“A further military incursion by Russia into Ukraine would be a massive strategic mistake and come with a severe cost on Russia’s economy, including coordinated sanctions,” she said.
Yesterday, Ukraine said that it had dismantled saboteurs controlled by Moscow who were preparing a series of attacks in Ukraine’s border regions to “destabilize” the situation.
The men were planning a “series of armed attacks” on city infrastructure, Ukraine’s security service, the SBU, said in a statement, adding that the group was “coordinated by Russian special services.”
The SBU said it arrested two residents of Ukraine, one of them a Russian citizen, and seized “an explosive device, small arms and ammunition.”
The two acted in Kharkov, a city with 1 million people located near the Russian border in the east, and in the town of Zhytomyr in central Ukraine, under the pretext of recruiting personnel for a private security firm, the SBU added.
A source in law enforcement said that the two men were former commandos with combat experience and were recruiting “mainly” Russians who had already committed violent crimes.
Additional reporting by Reuters
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