Russian military threats against Ukraine have entered a period of acute risk “in the course of the next few days,” according to British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who met with NATO leadership as his nation’s top diplomat tussled with Russian officials in Moscow.
“This is probably the most dangerous moment, I would say that, in the course of the next few days in what is the biggest security crisis that Europe has faced for decades,” Johnson told reporters in Brussels. “We’ve got to get it right. And I think that the combination of sanctions and military resolve, plus diplomacy … are what is in order.”
To that end, British lawmakers voted Thursday to empower Johnson to expand the menu of sanctions the United Kingdom can impose if Russian President Vladimir Putin authorizes a new invasion as Johnson ordered 1,000 British troops to prepare for possible deployment to Eastern Europe. Putin’s team is making its own preparations: Russian forces in Belarus, within striking distance of the Ukrainian capital, began military drills that Western officials worry could be converted into a real offensive. Meanwhile, Russian intelligence officials accused Kyiv of preparing to attack the Russian-controlled territory in eastern Ukraine.
VLADIMIR PUTIN INSERTS ‘CRAZY’ THREAT OF NUCLEAR WAR INTO UKRAINE DIPLOMACY
“We believe fundamentally in the self-determination of the Ukrainian people,” said British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss at the outset of a press conference with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. “If there were to be a Russian incursion into Ukraine, the Ukrainians will fight. This would be a prolonged and drawn-out conflict. The U.K. and our allies would put in place severe sanctions targeting individuals and institutions.”
Their joint appearance proved acrimonious, as Lavrov adopted a derisive tone while complaining Truss had ignored his positions.
“I’m honestly disappointed that what we have is a conversation between a dumb and a deaf person,” Lavrov said. “Our most detailed explanations fell on unprepared soil.”
Russian officials insist the Ukrainian conflict is a civil war, despite the apparent presence of Russian military equipment in eastern Ukraine and a recent Russian court ruling that referred to the presence of Russian troops in the conflict zone. Lavrov claimed a pair of agreements negotiated in the early days of the war is “just being sabotaged” by Ukrainian officials, who regard the Russian interpretation of those deals as a maneuver to impose at gunpoint a Kremlin rewrite of the Ukrainian constitution.
“I can’t see any other reason for having 100,000 troops stationed on the border, apart from to threaten Ukraine,” Truss said. “And if Russia is serious about diplomacy, they need to remove those troops and desist from the threats.”
Ukrainian officials and some Western analysts believe Putin is using the threat of a new invasion to scare Kyiv and NATO into making major concessions on security matters in eventual negotiations with Moscow.
“My theory of what he’s doing is trying to do everything [he can] to rattle President [Volodymyr] Zelensky and President [Joe] Biden,” Bill Taylor, former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, told the Washington Examiner. “So he’s told his generals … ‘Take every step that you would take if you thought that I was going to tell you to attack. Do everything, take every measure.’”
Zelensky has made a similar argument in recent weeks.
“The accumulation of forces at the border is psychological pressure from our neighbors,” he said Thursday. “We see nothing new here.”
In any case, a senior Russian spy chief accused Zelensky of planning to launch an offensive against the Donbas territories held by Russian forces and their proxies, saying Ukrainian authorities want to “clean them up via the Croatian scenario” — an apparent reference to the 1995 offensive that recovered Croatian territory held by Serbian forces while driving out more than 200,000 Serbian civilians.
“The [Ukrainian military and intelligence officials] are preparing provocations at the contact line in Donbas,” Russian Foreign Intelligence Service Director Sergey Naryshkin told state media. “All even partially combat-ready Ukrainian Armed Forces units have been concentrated at the Donbas border.”
That allegation could be interpreted as Russian officials alleging a pretext for a new offensive this weekend, according to Western observers — or it could just be the latest example of Moscow putting pressure on Kyiv.
“Considering that the Donbas contact line has recently become a tourist destination of different VIPs and [the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe] has their observers in the area, this all sounds quite crazy fiction,” a senior European official told the Washington Examiner.
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Lavrov, for his part, insisted that anyone who regards the Russian forces mobilized around Ukraine as a threat by Moscow is suffering from “hysteria.”
