Russia could invade Ukraine during the Beijing Winter Olympics, so Americans should leave the eastern European country immediately, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said yesterday.
Blinken did not detail the reasons behind the US Department of State’s latest security alert that calls on all US citizens to leave Ukraine.
“Simply put, we continue to see very troubling signs of Russian escalation, including new forces arriving at the Ukrainian border,” Blinken said in Melbourne.
Photo: Reuters
“We’re in a window when an invasion could begin at any time and, to be clear, that includes during the Olympics,” Blinken added.
The Olympic Games are scheduled to end on Feb. 20.
The US said that Russia is conducting live-fire drills near Ukraine with an estimated 13,000 soldiers grouped in dozens of combat brigades.
US President Joe Biden in a pre-taped interview with NBC News on Thursday also said that “American citizens should leave now.”
“We’re dealing with one of the largest armies in the world. It’s a very different situation and things could go crazy quickly,” he said.
Biden reiterated that under no circumstances would he send US troops to Ukraine, even to rescue Americans in case of a Russian invasion.
“That’s a world war. When Americans and Russians start shooting one another, we’re in a very different world,” he said.
Biden’s remarks were released hours after Russia rolled its tanks across Belarus for live-fire drills that drew an ominous warning from NATO and added urgency to Western efforts to avert war on the continent.
NATO said that Russia’s deployment of missiles, heavy armor and machine-gun toting soldiers marked a “dangerous moment” for Europe three decades after the Soviet Union’s collapse.
In a bid to “reduce chances of miscalculation” during the drills, US and Belarusian defense heads held rare telephone talks, the Pentagon said on Thursday.
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