WASHINGTON — Russia “has all the forces it needs” to launch an invasion of Ukraine, a top Biden administration official said Friday, warning Americans in the country to leave immediately ahead of a war that could start within days.
Speaking from the White House briefing room, national security adviser Jake Sullivan cited shifting U.S. intelligence that showed “new (Russian) forces arriving at the Ukraine border.”
Although he would not elaborate on the new intelligence, Sullivan warned that an attack “could begin during the Olympics.” Until now, intelligence officials believed Russian leader Vladimir Putin would wait until the Games concluded Feb. 20 before beginning a military assault.
The comments echoed those by Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken earlier in the day from Melbourne, Australia.
The White House said President Joe Biden is scheduled to speak to Putin this weekend. An administration official said Russia proposed the call to take place Monday, but agreed to a counterproposal for the conversation to take place Saturday.
It will be the first time the two leaders have spoken since late December. They spoke twice that month, first by video conference and then by phone. Officials from both sides met last month in Geneva. In recent days, Putin has met with other European leaders, including French President Emmanuel Macron and Germany’s new chancellor, Olaf Scholz, as a host of NATO allies have tried to dissuade Putin from starting a war.
Scholz met on Monday with Biden at the White House, where the president vowed that an invasion would mean the end of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline between Russia and Germany. The pipeline is not yet operational but could give Russia more leverage over Europe by increasing its control of the continent’s energy supply.
Sullivan would not comment on a news report that U.S. intelligence officials believe Putin has given Russian military officials the green light to invade, just that the decision was up to Putin, as it has been all along.
“We are ready either way,” Sullivan said, adding that Moscow’s buildup of more than 100,000 troops on Ukraine’s border with Russia had strengthened the NATO alliance, leaving it “more cohesive, more purposeful, more dynamic than in any time in recent memory.”
Sullivan also issued a stark warning to Americans who might be in Ukraine, urging them to leave “in the next 48 hours” ahead of a potential aerial assault by Russia that could block departure points, including airports. He added that, unlike in Afghanistan last year after the country fell more quickly than expected to the Taliban, there would not be an airlift to rescue stranded American citizens and visa holders.
The administration’s alarmist outward posture about Ukraine is a marked shift from its approach to the situation in Afghanistan before the country was overrun by the Taliban. In the weeks before Kabul fell, Biden scoffed at the possibility of the government’s swift collapse.
Sullivan also clarified that the U.S. forces under NATO command are taking part in an effort to defend members of the alliance and would not be “going to war with Russia.” He said the economic sanctions that NATO members are ready to impose on Russia upon an invasion would be severe.
“If Russia proceeds, its long-term power and influence will be diminished,” Sullivan said. “It will face massive pressure on its economy and export controls that will erode its defense industrial base and it will face a wave of condemnation from around the world.”
Pressed to disclose more of the shifting intelligence he cited, by a reporter reminding him of the Bush administration’s opacity about the faulty intelligence assessments it used in 2003 to justify the war in Iraq, Sullivan sought to draw clear distinctions. In this case, he said, the intelligence he referenced was being shared with the aim of preventing a war, not launching one. And, unlike the erroneous claims of evidence of Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, Putin’s preparations for war are “out in the open.”
Putin had hoped that his steady buildup of forces on Ukraine’s borders would compel NATO members to give him a guarantee that Ukraine, a former Soviet republic, would never be granted membership in the alliance.
Putin, a former KGB official, has long been agitated by Ukraine’s independence from Russia and the prospect of it aligning itself more closely with the rest of Europe. His annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 drew global condemnation and economic sanctions from the West, but the punishment has not seemed to deter him from contemplating another invasion.
The U.S. and other NATO members are privately reluctant to admit Ukraine, which under the alliance’s Article V would make the organization responsible for guaranteeing its military defense. But thus far NATO leaders have held firm in their refusal to give Putin such a guarantee, even though it could avert an armed conflict, stating that the decision will be up to Ukraine and NATO members, not dictated by Moscow.
Throughout their talks with their Russian counterparts, Biden administration officials said that Putin’s avowed security concerns about his country’s much smaller neighbor and his demands from NATO are merely a pretext for an eventual invasion. Sullivan reiterated that point Friday, warning reporters to be aware of “a false flag operation, something that they generate and try to blame on the Ukrainians as a trigger for military action.”
