Until now, American intelligence spoke of a high probability while stressing that Moscow had not yet decided. But for the first time, Friday evening, Joe Biden said he was “convinced” that Vladimir Putin had made “the decision” to invade Ukraine and that the multiplication of clashes was intended to create a “false justification” to launch the offensive in “the week” or even “the days” to come. “We think they will target Kiev, a city of 2.8 million innocent people,” added the American president in a speech from the White House.
The American president has left the door open to dialogue. As long as an invasion has not occurred, “diplomacy is always a possibility”, he said, announcing a meeting between his Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov next Thursday ” in Europe “.
To “avoid the worst”, Paris said for its part that French President Emmanuel Macron would speak on the phone with Vladimir Putin on Sunday, the day after a call with his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky.
“False justification”
Fears of a Russian military intervention in Ukraine are at their height amid rising ceasefire violations since Thursday between pro-Russian separatists and Ukrainian forces who have been fighting since 2014 in eastern Ukraine. , in a conflict that has already killed more than 14,000 people. The Russian state agency Ria Novosti reported two explosions, including that of a gas pipeline, in Lugansk, a city in this region held by the separatists. And the authorities of the pro-Russian secessionist territories have ordered the evacuation of civilians to Russia.
“All this corresponds to the strategy already used by the Russians in the past, which consists in creating a false justification to intervene against Ukraine”, affirmed President Biden after a new virtual meeting with his European and NATO allies . “It is cynical and cruel to use human beings as pawns to distract the world’s attention from the fact that Russia is building up its troops for an attack,” a spokesman for the Department of Defense said just before. American state.
190,000 soldiers around Ukraine
A US official estimated on Friday that Russia had 190,000 troops on the outskirts of Ukraine and on its territory, including separatist forces. So far, Washington was talking about more than 150,000 troops at the country’s borders. It is “the largest concentration of military troops” since the Cold War, said NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, judging that Moscow was “able, without further warning, to attack” the neighboring country.
The Russian president accused Kiev of fueling the conflict and noted a “worsening of the situation in the Donbass”, a region where the Ukrainian army has been fighting pro-Russian forces supported by Moscow for eight years.
The separatist leaders of the Donetsk region and the neighboring “republic” of Lugansk have for their part announced an evacuation of civilians to Russia – but not of “men capable of holding a weapon”. But the two videos uploaded on Friday appear to have been filmed on Wednesday, according to the metadata of the files shared on Telegram, 24 hours before the escalation of the incidents, in particular with a nursery school hit by a warhead on Thursday.
The Russian president ordered the payment of 10,000 rubles (about 114 euros) to each person leaving these areas. Russian television channels showed images of evacuations of children gathered in the courtyard of their orphanage.
As tensions rise on the ground, Russia again claimed on Friday to withdraw military units from the outskirts of Ukraine, without however convincing its opponents. US Defense Minister Lloyd Austin even claimed that the Russian army was sending “more forces” and preparing for an intervention “by moving closer to the border, positioning troops, increasing their logistical capabilities”.