UPDATE: 2:55 p.m.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The United States is relocating its embassy operations in Ukraine from the capital Kyiv to the western city of Lviv, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Monday, citing the “dramatic acceleration in the buildup of Russian forces.”
The move comes as U.S. officials warn Moscow could launch an attack on Ukraine, including on Kyiv, any day, after amassing more than 100,000 troops close to the eastern border of the former Soviet republic and more forces in Belarus to the north.
Blinken said in a statement the decision was taken out of concern for the safety of embassy staff. Most embassy staff have already been ordered to depart Ukraine and U.S. citizens have been advised to leave the country.
“My team and I constantly review the security situation to determine when prudence dictates a change in posture,” Blinken said, adding that Washington would continue working for a diplomatic solution to the tensions.
Embassy operations were being temporarily moved to Lviv — roughly 50 miles from Ukraine’s western border with Poland — but the embassy would remain engaged with the Ukrainian government in Kyiv, Blinken said
(Reporting by Simon Lewis and Doina Chiacu; Editing by Chris Reese and Chizu Nomiyama)
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UPDATE: 1:36 p.m.
MOSCOW/KYIV (Reuters) – Russia suggested on Monday that it was ready to keep talking to the West to try to defuse a security crisis, while the United States said Moscow was adding to its military capabilities by the day for a potential attack on Ukraine.
Russia has more than 100,000 troops massed near the border of Ukraine. It denies Western accusations that it is planning an invasion, but says it could take unspecified “military-technical” action unless a range of demands are met, including barring Kyiv from ever joining the NATO alliance.
In a televised exchange, President Vladimir Putin was shown asking his foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, whether there was a chance of an agreement to address Russia’s security concerns, or whether it was just being dragged into tortuous negotiations.
Lavrov replied: “We have already warned more than once that we will not allow endless negotiations on questions that demand a solution today.”
But he added: “It seems to me that our possibilities are far from exhausted … At this stage, I would suggest continuing and building them up.”
Washington has said Russia could invade Ukraine “any day now”. Putin is adding more military force and capability near Ukraine‘s border with each passing day, Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby told MSNBC in an interview on Monday.
“This is a military that, that continues to grow stronger, continues to grow more ready. They’re exercising, so we believe that he has a lot of capabilities and options available to him should he want to use military force,” Kirby said.
Western countries have already promised sanctions on an unprecedented scale if Russia does invade. The Group of Seven large economies (G7) warned of “economic and financial sanctions which will have massive and immediate consequences on the Russian economy”.
Ukraine‘s ambassador to Britain, quoted earlier by the BBC as saying that Kyiv might be “flexible” about its goal of one day joining NATO, said on Monday he had been misunderstood and there was no suggestion it would withdraw its application.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres spoke separately on Monday with the foreign ministers of Russia and Ukraine, and still believed “from his own analysis, his own hopes” that there would not be a conflict, a U.N. spokesperson said.
STOCKS SLIDE
Moscow says Ukraine‘s quest to join the Western military alliance poses a threat. While NATO has no immediate plans to admit Ukraine, Western countries say they cannot negotiate over a sovereign country’s right to form alliances.
Eight years ago, mass protests on Kyiv’s Maidan square in favour of closer integration with the West forced out pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych. Russia responded by seizing and annexing Ukraine‘s Crimean peninsula, and backing pro-Russian rebels in parts of Ukraine‘s industrial east in a war that has killed more than 14,000 people.
Monday’s talk of diplomatic efforts continuing brought the price of crude oil down off the seven-year highs it had hit earlier amid concerns that sanctions would disrupt exports from Russia, a major producer, in an already tight market. [O/R]
Major European stock markets slumped by between 2% and 3%, although Wall Street’s S&P 500 index, which had tumbled at the end of last week, was flat on Monday by early afternoon.
Sanctions could ultimately rebound on Western powers, which rely heavily on Russia for energy supplies.
ECONOMIC DAMAGE
Ukraine is already suffering economic damage from the standoff. A surge in the price of 5-year credit default swaps on Ukrainian sovereign bonds suggested that markets gave Kyiv a 42% probability of defaulting.
U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan told congressional leaders on Monday that Washington was considering offering Ukraine up to $1 billion in sovereign loan guarantees to calm markets, a source familiar with the adviser’s call told Reuters.
Ukraine International Airlines, Ukraine‘s biggest airline, said its insurers had terminated cover for at least some of its aircraft on flights in Ukrainian airspace.
Lavrov told Putin the United States had put forward concrete proposals on reducing military risks, but that responses from NATO and the European Union – which has been at pains not to let Moscow divide its members – had not been satisfactory.
An EU official, who asked not to be identified but has spoken to Putin by phone in the past, said the EU was looking at alternative sources of energy in case Russia cut off supplies.
“Russia is trying to demonstrate that it is the policeman in the region,” the source said. “The criticism by Moscow against Ukraine is this idea that the people made a choice for liberal democracy, values, principles and freedoms.”
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz held talks in Kyiv with President Volodymyr Zelenskiy. On Tuesday, he is due to fly to Moscow, the latest Western official to make the trip after French President Emmanuel Macron and two British ministers went last week.
Scholz said he saw “no reasonable justification” for Russia’s military activity on Ukraine‘s border, and that “we are ready for a serious dialogue with Russia on European security issues”. He announced a credit of 150 million euros ($170 million) for Ukraine.
While Zelenskiy affirmed that Ukraine would not give up its push to join NATO, Scholz said it was strange that Russia had raised the issue just now, when it was “not on the agenda”.
($1 = 0.8838 euros)
(Darya Korsunskaya in Moscow and Natalia Zinets in Kyiv; additional reporting by Dmitry Antonov and Maria Kiselyova in Moscow, Guy Faulconbridge in London; Thomas Escritt in Berlin; Chen Lin in Singapore; Shreyashi Sanyal, Anisha Sircar and Muviya M in Bengaluru; Writing by Kevin Liffey and Peter Graff; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne, Jon Boyle, Alison Williams and Grant McCool)
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ORIGINAL STORY:
WASHINGTON/KYIV (Reuters) -Russia could invade Ukraine at any time and might create a surprise pretext for an attack, the United States said on Sunday, as it reaffirmed a pledge to defend “every inch” of NATO territory.
Russia has more than 100,000 troops massed near Ukraine, which is not part of the Atlantic military alliance, and Washington – while keeping open the diplomatic channels that have so far failed to ease the crisis – has repeatedly said an invasion is imminent.
Moscow denies any such plans and has accused the West of “hysteria”.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, on the eve of a trip that takes him to Kyiv on Monday and Moscow for talks with President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday, called for Russia to de-escalate and warned of sanctions if Moscow did invade.
A German official said Berlin did not expect “concrete results” but diplomacy was important.
In what could amount to a major concession to Moscow, Ukraine‘s ambassador to Britain told the BBC Kyiv could drop its bid to join NATO to avoid war.
Ambassador Vadym Prystaiko was quoted as saying Ukraine was willing to be “flexible” over its goal to join the Atlantic military alliance.
“We might – especially being threatened like that, blackmailed by that, and pushed to it,” Prystaiko was quoted as saying when asked if Kyiv could change its position on NATO membership.
In Washington, President Joe Biden’s National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said an invasion could begin “any day now”.
“We cannot perfectly predict the day, but we have now been saying for some time that we are in the window,” Sullivan told CNN.
U.S. officials said they could not confirm reports that U.S. intelligence indicated Russia planned to invade on Wednesday.
Sullivan said Washington would continue sharing what it learned with the world in order to deny Moscow the chance to stage a surprise “false flag” operation that could be a pretext for an attack.
It would also “defend every inch of NATO territory … and Russia we think fully understands that message,” Sullivan added in a separate CBS interview.
Biden spoke to his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Sunday and they agreed on the importance of continuing to pursue diplomacy and deterrence in response to Russia’s military build-up, the White House said after the call.
Zelenskiy’s office said he invited Biden to visit Ukraine soon. The White House declined to comment.
Agreeing with the U.S. assessment that an invasion could happen “at any moment,” a British government spokesperson said Britain was working on a package of military support and economic aid for Ukraine to be announced in coming days. Prime Minister Boris Johnson will make a trip to Europe later this week to build support to end the standoff with Russia.
Biden told Putin in a phone call on Saturday that the West would respond decisively to any invasion and such an attack would harm and isolate Moscow.
Ukrainian Defence Minister Oleksii Reznikov said on Twitter that Kyiv had so far received almost 1,500 tonnes of ammunition from allies delivered on 17 flights, including about 180 tonnes from the United States.
Canada’s defense ministry said it has temporarily withdrawn its Ukraine-based military personnel to an undisclosed location in Europe. Canada, which is home to the world’s third-largest Ukrainian population after Ukraine and Russia, has kept a 200-strong training mission in western Ukraine since 2015.
RUSSIAN SECURITY DEMANDS
The Kremlin said Putin told Biden during their call on Saturday that Washington had failed to take Russia’s main concerns into account, and that it had received no “substantial answer” on key elements of its security demands.
Putin wants guarantees from the United States and NATO that include blocking Ukraine‘s entry into NATO, refraining from missile deployments near Russia’s borders and scaling back NATO’s military infrastructure in Europe to 1997 levels.
Washington regards many of the proposals as non-starters but has pushed the Kremlin to discuss them jointly with Washington and its European allies.
“The diplomatic path remains open. The way for Moscow to show that it wants to pursue that path is simple,” U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said after he held talks on Saturday with Asian allies.
Washington and its European allies and others have been scaling back or evacuating embassy staff and urging citizens to depart immediately or avoid travel to Ukraine.
U.S. staff at the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) began leaving by car from the rebel-held city of Donetsk in east Ukraine on Sunday, a Reuters witness said.
The OSCE conducts operations in Ukraine including a civilian monitoring mission in Russian-backed, self-proclaimed separatist republics in the regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, where a war that began in 2014 has killed more than 14,000 people.
Ukraine said on Sunday it wanted talks with Russia and members of the OSCE within 48 hours to discuss Russia’s military build-up. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said Moscow had not responded after Kyiv on Friday invoked a part of the Vienna Document, a set of security agreements, to demand Moscow explain its military activities.
Dutch carrier KLM said it would stop flying to Ukraine and Germany’s Lufthansa said it was considering suspending flights.
An adviser to Zelenskiy, Mykhailo Podolyak, said that regardless of what airlines chose to do Kyiv would not close its airspace as that would resemble “a kind of partial blockade”.
A French presidency official said on Saturday, after President Emmanuel Macron spoke with Putin, that there were no indications from what the Russian leader said that Moscow was preparing an offensive, though Paris remained “extremely vigilant”.
British defence minister Ben Wallace cautioned against putting too much hope in talks, telling The Sunday Times of London that there was “a whiff of Munich in the air from some in the West”, referring to a 1938 pact that failed to halt German expansionism under Adolf Hitler.
(Reporting by Humeyra Pamuk, Anton Zverev, Lydia Kelly, Andrew MacAskill, David Lawder and Katharine Jackson; Writing by Edmund Blair, John Stonestreet, Matt Spetalnick and Stephen Coates; Editing by Frances Kerry, Angus MacSwan, Daniel Wallis and Raju Gopalakrishnan)
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