US President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin. yunhap news
US President Joe Biden said he was concerned about a possible Russian invasion of Ukraine and had evidence that Vladimir Putin was determined to invade.
President Biden said in a speech at the White House on the 18th that he had “good reason to believe that Russia would attack Ukraine in the next few days.”
“We have reason to believe that the Russian military is planning and intending to launch an attack on Ukraine within the next few weeks,” he said.
“There is reason to believe that President Putin has decided to invade Ukraine,” he added.
“At this point, I’m pretty sure he’s made a decision,” he said, citing America’s intelligence capabilities as the basis for his judgment.
“If Russia goes ahead with the plan, it will be a catastrophic choice, and the United States and its allies are prepared to defend even the last piece of NATO territory,” he asserted.
He also condemned Russia for leaking false information to justify an invasion, accusing it of “all of this is a script that Russia devised to launch an attack on Ukraine, something the United States and its allies had been warning of for weeks.”
However, he emphasized the possibility of a diplomatic solution until the end.
President Biden said, “Russia still has the option of diplomacy. It is not yet too late to take tension-reducing measures and return to negotiations,” Biden said, referring to the meeting between US Secretary of State Tony Blincoln and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov next week.
“If Russia takes military action before that, it becomes clear that they have spurred the door of diplomacy,” he said. ‘ he warned.
Earlier that afternoon, President Biden met Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyenne, French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, and Jens Stol. I had phone calls with the heads of countries, including NATO Secretary-General Tenberg, and discussed the situation in Ukraine.