President Biden and his top aides unleashed a new volley of warnings Thursday that the Kremlin is preparing for a military invasion of neighboring Ukraine, perhaps in the next few days, as the administration brushed aside Russian protestations to the contrary.
The extraordinarily blunt comments from Mr. Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and other senior U.S. officials set off more fears of a shooting war in the heart of Europe, sent U.S. stocks plunging in value, and seemed to leave only a small and shrinking window for a diplomatic way out of the conflict.
U.S. and NATO officials again said they saw no signs on the ground of a promised Russian pullback of some of the more than 130,000 troops that have methodically surrounded Ukraine on three sides in recent weeks.
Mr. Biden told reporters at the White House on Thursday morning that the invasion threat remains “very high” because Russia has moved more troops toward the border with Ukraine instead of pulling them back.
“Every indication we have is they’re prepared to go into Ukraine, attack Ukraine …,” Mr. Biden said. “My sense is it will happen in the next several days.”
“The evidence on the ground is that Russia is moving toward an imminent invasion. This is a crucial moment,” said Linda Thomas-Greenfield, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
Instead of pulling back its troops, ships and heavy weaponry ringing Ukraine, the Russian military has dispatched another 7,000 soldiers to the tense border area in recent days, U.S. officials say. The Ukrainian government and Russian-backed separatist forces traded charges of shelling in the Donbass area.
Mr. Blinken and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson warned that the Kremlin was poised to use that conflict as a “false-flag operation” as a pretext for an invasion.
As Russian officials decried what they called “war hysteria” from Washington, Mr. Blinken used a hastily scheduled address to the U.N. Security Council on Thursday morning to lay out what he said was the likely way Moscow would use disinformation and other tricks to justify military action. He said the administration felt compelled to speak out on the dangers, even at the risk of being proved wrong.
“Let me be clear: I am here today not to start a war, but to prevent one,” Mr. Blinken told the Security Council. “The information I’ve presented here is validated by what we’ve seen unfolding in plain sight before our eyes for months.
“If Russia doesn’t invade Ukraine, then we will be relieved that Russia changed course and proved our predictions wrong. … And we will gladly accept any criticism that anyone directs at us.”
Mr. Blinken warned that Russia had multiple ways to fabricate an excuse for military action, including “the invented discovery of the mass grave, a staged drone strike against civilians or a fake — even a real — attack using chemical weapons.”
Mr. Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin will huddle with their European allies and with Ukrainian officials over the next few days at the annual Munich Security Conference in Germany. Vice President Kamala Harris is leading the U.S. delegation to the gathering, which Russian officials are boycotting this year.
It will be one of the most delicate and high-profile assignments yet for Ms. Harris, who had relatively little foreign policy experience when Mr. Biden chose her as his running mate in 2020. She is scheduled to meet with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
“The key objective for her trip now is to focus on this fast-changing, evolving situation — this tremendous challenge that we are facing now — to make sure that we are fully aligned with our allies and partners, and to make sure that we have sent a very clear message to Russia,” a senior administration official said. “Our preference is diplomacy and deterrence, but if Russia chooses aggression, we are ready. The U.S. is ready; our allies are ready.”
Russian response
In Moscow, the government of Russian President Vladimir Putin released a lengthy written response to U.S. and NATO proposals to end the crisis. It said the Western response effectively ignored Russia’s national security red lines. The U.S. and its allies have rejected the Kremlin’s demands to bar Ukraine permanently from NATO and to pull back troops and weaponry broadly along Russia’s western borders.
The document defends Russia’s massive buildup of troops on Ukraine’s border.
“Ultimate demands to withdraw troops from certain areas on Russian territory, accompanied by threats of tougher sanctions, are unacceptable and undermine the prospects for reaching real agreements,” the 10-page response read.
“In the absence of the readiness of the American side to agree on firm, legally binding guarantees to ensure our security from the United States and its allies, Russia will be forced to respond, including through the implementation of military-technical measures.”
Mr. Blinken said in his U.N. remarks that he had written a letter to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov asking for another face-to-face meeting in Europe next week.
Analysts say the Biden administration has made a clear decision to effectively release all of its intelligence findings — confirmed and speculative — into the public debate in an effort to put the Kremlin on the defensive and preempt possible strategies to shift the blame for the crisis to Ukraine and NATO.
Mr. Austin, appearing with NATO’s Mr. Stoltenberg, offered some of the signs pointing to a Russian incursion, including the troop and naval buildup, the presence of more combat and support aircraft, and even the stocking-up of blood supplies near the front lines with Ukraine.
“You know, I was a soldier myself not that long ago,” said Mr. Austin, a former Army general, “and I know firsthand that you don’t do these sorts of things for no reason. And you certainly don’t do them if you’re getting ready to pack up and go home.”
The strategy comes with some risks, as Mr. Blinken acknowledged. Russian officials have mocked repeated American predictions of “imminent” war, and even Mr. Zelenskyy has criticized the scare talk coming from Washington. He said it is undermining the confidence of ordinary Ukrainians.
China, which has moved closer to Mr. Putin as the clash with the U.S. has escalated, criticized the Biden administration for “hyping and sensationalizing the crisis.”
“Disseminating disinformation and creating an air of tension is not conducive to resolving the Ukraine issue,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin told a Beijing briefing. “Clamoring for bloc confrontation and wielding the big stick of sanctions will only impede dialogue and negotiation.”
Another front in the U.S.-Russia stare-down opened Thursday when the Russian Foreign Ministry announced that it had ordered the deputy chief of mission for the U.S. Embassy in Moscow to leave the country.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in a statement Thursday afternoon that the expulsion of veteran diplomat Bart Gorman last week was retaliation for a demand that an unidentified Russian diplomat leave Washington, and was not an escalation in the clash over Ukraine. The U.S. expulsion, she said, left the Russian Embassy severely understaffed.
“This was done strictly in retaliation for the groundless expulsion of a minister-counselor of our embassy in Washington, contrary to his senior diplomatic rank,” Ms. Zakharova said in the statement, posted on the ministry’s website. “Moreover, the [State Department] defiantly ignored our request for prolonging his stay at least until a substitute arrived.”
A State Department official called the move “unprovoked.”
“We consider this an escalatory step and are considering our response,” a department spokesperson said.
• Dave Boyer and Mike Glenn contributed to this article, which is based in part on wire service reports.