WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken warned Thursday that Russia “is preparing to launch an attack” against Ukraine, echoing comments earlier in the day from U.S. and Western officials who said an invasion could come at any minute and that Moscow would seek to use disinformation to create a pretext for such an assault.
“The most immediate threat to peace and security is Russia’s looming aggression against Ukraine,” Blinken said during an impromptu stop at a U.N. Security Council meeting to discuss developments in Ukraine. “The stakes go far beyond Ukraine. This is a moment of peril for the lives and safety of millions of people.”
Even though Western officials said they were holding out hope for diplomacy, their increasingly dire rhetoric, as well as actions taken by the Kremlin, underscored a sense that a conflict was inevitable and imminent. The State Department on Thursday said Russia expelled the second-most senior official at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow.
President Joe Biden also reiterated to reporters the administration’s early assertion that there was a “very high” probability that the Kremlin could order an attack on its neighbor in “the next couple of days.”
Biden and Blinken have said that the West would impose severe economic sanctions on Russia in the wake of any invasion. “Our response will be sharp and decisive,” said Blinken, who stopped in New York on his way to a security conference in Germany.
Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov, speaking before Blinken at the Security Council, said there have been enough “baseless accusations” leveled against Russia over the potential for an invasion. He also noted that U.S. and other officials said they expected an invasion to be launched Feb. 16, a date that has come and gone.
“My advice to you,” he said, presumably addressing Blinken, “is not to put yourself in an awkward situation.” Ryabkov also continued to accuse Ukraine of a campaign against ethnic Russians, an allegation the West calls part of the misinformation campaign. “We have thousands of victims of the internal armed conflict, and many millions in Donbass are still presented as foreigners in their their own country.”
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg and U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III, speaking in Brussels, disputed Russian claims that Russian President Vladimir Putin had ordered a withdraw of some troops amassed at the border. In fact, Austin said, Russia has added troops to the 150,000 it has deployed around Ukraine. A senior administration official told reporters Wednesday night that the Kremlin had added 7,000 troops to those forces over the last two days.
“I know firsthand that you don’t do these sorts of things for no reason,” said Austin, who served in the U.S. Army for four decades, rising to become a general. “And you certainly don’t do them if you’re getting ready to pack up and go home.”
Stoltenberg described the situation as “dangerous.” Russia has “enough troops and capabilities to launch a full-fledged invasion of Ukraine with very little or no warning,” Stoltenberg said, warning that Moscow was likely to deploy disinformation to create a pretext for war with the country, a former Soviet republic.
Biden echoed those concerns, telling reporters that “we have reason to believe that they are engaged in a false-flag operation to have an excuse to go in.”
U.S. and its Western allies have been trying to fend off that disinformation campaign and expressed skepticism of new claims by Russia that Ukraine is to blame for reported shelling and gunfire exchanged Thursday with Russian-backed separatists in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region.
Austin said the U.S. is investigating the incidents, adding that they fit into the Russian disinformation playbook that allies have been warning about. The defense secretary and Stoltenberg faced questions about the reliability of their own evidence, given prior intelligence failures and vocal warnings by U.S. and NATO officials in recent days that a Russian attack was imminent.
“I don’t see this as a competition of narratives,” Austin said, pointing to Russia’s record. He said he expects Moscow to launch more cyberattacks and false-flag narratives blaming Ukraine.
“We’re beginning to see more and more of that,” he said.
Austin and Stoltenberg urged Russia to seek a diplomatic solution to the crisis. But they conceded that the tension between Russia and Europe could linger, leaving Western allies on the razor’s edge in what Stoltenberg called “a new normal” reminiscent of the Cold War.
“We have seen this trend over many years, where Russia contests fundamental principles for European security,” he said, warning that Moscow would continue to “intimidate countries in Europe” to disrupt defense alliances.
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