Artillery exchanges in Eastern Ukraine might presage invasion, US warns

Residents close to Ukraine’s entrance line hastened into basements for canopy Thursday as exchanges of artillery fireplace with Russian-backed separatists reached their most intense degree in months, an ominous improvement amid Western fears that Russia would possibly use the combating as a pretext to invade Ukraine.

As the United States and Russia traded conflicting accounts over whether or not Russian forces had been actually pulling again from the Ukrainian border, as Moscow has insisted, the separatists claimed they’d come beneath fireplace from the Ukrainians. That is exactly the type of incident Western officers have warned Russia would possibly attempt to use to justify navy motion.

At the White House, President Joe Biden mentioned “every indication we have is they’re prepared to go into Ukraine, attack Ukraine.” He mentioned the United States had “reason to believe” that Russia was “engaged in a false flag operation to have an excuse to go in.”

Secretary of State Antony Blinken made an unscheduled journey to New York, the place he informed the United Nations Security Council that US intelligence “indicates clearly” that Russian forces surrounding the nation from three sides “are preparing to launch an attack against Ukraine in the coming days “

The escalation of tensions rippled all through the markets, the place inventory costs plunged.

Russia continued to insist Thursday that it had no plans to invade, issuing new updates about troop withdrawals and dismissing the US invasion warnings as “information terrorism.”

The Russian authorities additionally printed a prolonged response to US proposals made final month to ease tensions, sustaining the Kremlin’s push to regain a sphere of affect in Eastern Europe and issuing a imprecise warning of latest navy deployments. If the United States doesn’t accede to its calls for, the doc mentioned, “Russia will be forced to respond, including through the implementation of measures of a military-technical character.”

A Ukrainian navy tank train in Donetsk Oblast is abruptly canceled as troopers carrying arms and tools put together to maneuver to an undisclosed location February 17, 2022. (Tyler Hicks/The New York Times)

In jap Ukraine on Thursday, the place a kindergarten was shelled, the spike in violence evoked the type of situation that Western leaders have been warning of amid the big Russian troop buildup surrounding Ukraine.

President Vladimir Putin of Russia this week repeated his false declare that Ukraine was finishing up a “genocide” in opposition to Russian audio system within the nation’s east, whereas the Russian authorities introduced an investigation into supposed “mass graves” of Russian-speaking victims of Ukrainian forces.

And on Thursday, the Kremlin’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, provided an ominous evaluation. “The excessive concentration of Ukrainian forces near the contact line, together with possible provocations, can pose terrible danger,” he mentioned.

Blinken informed the Security Council that Moscow gave the impression to be setting the stage.

“Russia plans to manufacture a pretext for its attack,” he mentioned, citing a “so-called terrorist bombing” or “a fake, even a real attack” with chemical weapons. “This could be a violent event that Russia will blame on Ukraine,” he mentioned, “or an outrageous accusation that Russia will level against the Ukrainian government.”

If so, it will not be the primary time.

When Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, it did so after claiming that Russian audio system there have been threatened by the pro-Western revolution within the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, which the Kremlin described as a fascist coup. And in 2008, Russia invaded Georgia after the Georgian military moved right into a Russian-backed separatist enclave there.

The skirmishing in Eastern Europe between Ukrainian forces and Kremlin-backed separatists is long-standing, however Thursday’s violence was the worst since a cease-fire was reached two years in the past.

A broken room in a kindergarten within the city of Stanytsia Luhanska, Ukraine, February 17, 2022. (Lynsey Addario/The New York Times)

The combatants exchanged not simply shells however allegations. The Ukrainian navy mentioned three grownup civilians had been wounded on the kindergarten, and on the opposite facet, a Russian-backed separatist chief claimed Ukraine had launched mortar fireplace “barbarically and cynically.”

The artillery fireplace started within the early morning and didn’t let up with the arrival of night. The sharp crack of explosions echoed off buildings, and flashes of sunshine from incoming shells silhouetted bushes.

The days of whiplash developments made unmistakable the volatility of a disaster that US officers concern might result in an assault by one of many world’s strongest militaries in opposition to Ukraine, Europe’s second-biggest nation, a improvement youthful Europeans by no means thought they’d see.

Still, in Moscow, many analysts remained satisfied that Putin’s troop buildup was a bluff — a way to stress the West to rule out Ukrainian membership in NATO and to drive the alliance to roll again its presence in Eastern Europe.

Whatever his true intentions, the diplomatic and navy disaster has additionally grow to be an intense battle of public messaging, with each Moscow and Washington deploying vivid imagery and rhetoric to discredit the opposite facet.

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin mentioned at a gathering of his NATO counterparts in Brussels that Russia continued to maneuver troops nearer to Ukraine’s borders. He mentioned it was additionally including fight plane and stocking up on blood provides in anticipation of casualties on the battlefield.

“I know firsthand that you don’t do these sorts of things for no reason,” mentioned Austin, a retired four-star Army basic. “And you certainly don’t do them if you’re getting ready to pack up and go home.”

Early Friday morning, quickly after Blinken arrived in Munich for an annual safety convention, State Department spokesperson Ned Price mentioned Blinken had accepted a proposal to satisfy with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov late subsequent week. Price didn’t present a time or place for the assembly, the 2 diplomats’ second in two months, besides to say it will not occur if Russia additional invaded Ukraine. “If they do invade in the coming days, it will make clear they were never serious about diplomacy,” Price mentioned within the assertion.

Ukrainian tank crews take a break throughout navy workout routines February 2022 at a base close to Rivne, about 60 miles from the Belarus border. (Lynsey Addario/The New York Times)

Although there are about 150,000 Russian troops surrounding Ukraine, Russia has solid the deployments as little greater than navy drills. On Thursday, worldwide reporters had been invited to go to Belarus — a detailed Kremlin ally — to see for themselves. There, amid the roar of Russian and Belarusian firepower, they had been handled to some mocking feedback directed at Western intelligence businesses by Belarus’ strongman chief, Alexander Lukashenko.

“There will be no invasion tomorrow,” Lukashenko mentioned because the navy drills had been staged at a desolate navy coaching floor southeast of Minsk, Belarus’ capital. “Are you still entertaining this crazy idea?”

Lukashenko was scheduled to satisfy with Putin in Moscow on Friday, and pledged that he was prepared to maintain Russian troops in his nation for “as long as necessary.”

Western officers say the Russian troops gathered in Belarus are a part of what makes the present invasion risk so dire, permitting the Kremlin to assault from the north in addition to from the Russian mainland to the east and from Crimea and the Black Sea to the south.

A key query now could be whether or not Russia will proceed its diplomatic engagement with the West. While Putin and Lavrov held a flurry of conferences and calls with their Western counterparts in current weeks, there have been no extra such interactions on the calendar for the approaching days.

Blinken mentioned the State Department was “evaluating” the Russian doc delivered to Washington on Thursday and that he had proposed to Lavrov that the 2 meet in Europe subsequent week. Russian officers didn’t affirm that the minister would settle for the assembly.

“Blinken hasn’t even gotten around to reading Russia’s response, and he’s already calling Lavrov to a meeting,” a senior Russian Foreign Ministry official mentioned. “What are they going to talk about?”

The doc indicated there was solely a slim diplomatic means ahead.

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, second from left, arrives to attend navy workout routines Feruary 16, 2022 at a base close to Rivne, about 60 miles from the Belarus border. (Lynsey Addario/The New York Times)

It mentioned a US proposal to permit Russia to examine US missile protection bases in Poland and Romania that the Kremlin sees as a risk might “be further taken into consideration.” It additionally mentioned that Russia noticed “the potential for mutually acceptable agreements” with regards to long-range bomber flights close to nationwide borders. And it mentioned that Russia was “open in principle” to a dialogue of changing the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty, a landmark 1987 nuclear arms-control pact that the Trump administration deserted in 2019, after accusing Russia of violating it.

But Moscow insisted that these parts may very well be agreed upon solely as a part of a package deal that addressed Russia’s central calls for.

“We welcome the readiness of the United States for appropriate consultations,” the doc mentioned. “However, this work cannot replace the settlement of the key problems posed by Russia.”

Among Russia’s calls for was that NATO militaries halt all cooperation with Ukraine and take away all Western weaponry delivered to the nation lately to assist it defend in opposition to Russia and Russian-backed separatists. The doc additionally repeated Russia’s central calls for for “security guarantees” that Putin first described final November, together with that NATO guarantee that Ukraine would by no means be a part of the alliance and that it will pull again troops stationed in nations that joined the alliance after 1997.

“Our ‘pink strains’ and elementary safety pursuits are being ignored, and Russia’s inalienable proper to guarantee them is being rejected,” the doc mentioned.

Western leaders have rejected the demand to drag again troops or bar sure nations from NATO, however have hinted at the potential for Ukraine itself swearing off membership within the alliance.

And whereas the letter repeated current denials by Russian officers of any plans to invade Ukraine, it additionally warned of an unspecified navy response if these calls for weren’t met, one which analysts have interpreted because the potential deployment of superior missile programs in a brand new, extra threatening posture.

“No ‘Russian invasion of Ukraine,’ which the United States and its allies have been formally saying since final fall, is going on, neither is one being deliberate,” the document said. But if the United States does not provide “agency, legally binding ensures of our safety,” it mentioned, “Russia will be forced to respond, including through the implementation of measures of a military-technical character.”