The U.S. government claims to be in possession of “credible information” that proves Russian forces have compiled a list of Ukrainians to be killed or detained following an invasion.
Ambassador Bathsheba Nell Crocker, the U.S. representative to the European office of the United Nations, made the acknowledgment in a letter sent to Michelle Bachelet, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, which was obtained and published by the New York Times, though Foreign Policy first reported it on Friday.
“Specifically, we have credible information that indicates Russian forces are creating lists of identified Ukrainians to be killed or sent to camps following a military occupation,” Crocker wrote in the letter, also noting that it’s “likely” that Russian forces will use “lethal measures to disperse peaceful protests.”
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The letter also referenced Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s recent comments to the U.N. Security Council, saying he explained that the “United States has information that indicates Russia will target specific groups of Ukrainians.”
He and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov are expected to meet on Thursday, but that meeting is contingent upon an invasion not happening before then.
Should that meeting take place, there’s a chance Presidents Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin could hold their own dialogue. The White House announced on Sunday night that Biden would be open to such a conversation after the two officials meet, though a Kremlin spokesperson later said such an announcement was “premature.”
U.S. officials believe that Russia “probably has massed between 169,000-190,000 personnel in and near Ukraine” and that Russian officials are “intent on creating a pretext to justify an invasion,” while Putin has maintained his demand that NATO not expand eastward.
Biden said he was “convinced” that Putin had decided to invade Ukraine last Friday, though the administration remains willing to negotiate through diplomatic channels to come up with a peaceful resolution.
The administration has repeatedly issued warnings about a possible invasion for weeks, though the warnings have reached seemingly new heights daily.
White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan warned that “every indication” points to a “major attack” from Russia during a Monday morning interview on Today.
“We believe that any military operation of the size, scope, and magnitude of what we believe the Russians are planning will be extremely violent,” he added. “It will cost the lives of Ukrainians and Russians, civilians and military personnel alike. But we also have intelligence to suggest that there will be an even greater form of brutality because this will not simply be some conventional war between two armies, it will be a war waged by Russia on the Ukrainian people to repress them, to crush them, to harm them.”
The administration has said it is prepared for an invasion or prepared to put a greater emphasis on diplomacy if Russia desires. In preparation, Biden has deployed roughly 6,000 troops to Eastern European allies, not Ukraine, though they would not enter Ukraine to fight Russians. They could, however, help Americans fleeing Ukraine, who have been instructed to leave already, once they get to a neighboring country.
An additional 8,500 troops were put on “heightened alert” for a possible deployment should NATO call up its force.
While U.S. officials have had frequent conversations with their Ukrainian counterparts, the two sides haven’t always seen the situation exactly the same.
Late last month, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the situation is “under control” and that he hadn’t seen “any grounds for statements about a full-scale offensive,” while the Biden administration was saying that Russia could launch a “false flag operation” to garner the supposed pretext for an invasion that could occur “at any point.”
More recently, Zelensky rebuked the United States, among other allies, who planned to issue sanctions against Russia after an invasion, not before — a debate that also occurred on Capitol Hill.
“We don’t need your sanctions after the bombardment will happen and after our country will be fired at, or after we will have no borders and after we will have no economy or part of our country will be occupied,” Zelensky said Saturday during a security conference in Munich. “Why would we need those sanctions then?”
The Biden administration has warned that the sanctions would be crippling, though various attempts at bipartisan legislation have fallen apart over the question of preemptive or reactionary sanctions. Many GOP members argue that the sanctions should be placed on Russian officials and entities before an invasion, while Democrats and the administration have argued that doing so would reduce their leverage.
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Fighting has broken out in the eastern part of Ukraine, which is occupied by Russian separatists. Last week, there was a night of shelling in Eastern Ukraine, where Russian proxies and Ukrainian forces have been engaged in a low-profile war since 2014.
The so-called Donetsk People’s Republic, one of the Russian proxy institutions established in the midst of the conflict, accused the Ukrainian military of “purposefully provoking the resumption of hostilities” just days after a senior Russian official emphasized that such an incident would trigger a major Russian assault, which could be a part of a false flag operation.
The Kremlin announced on Monday that Putin intends to recognize the Luhansk People’s Republic and the Donetsk People’s Republic as independent, according to a statement.
Last week, Russia’s parliament, the Duma, passed a resolution calling for their independence to be recognized, which elicited a rebuke from Blinken, who said it would “further undermine Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, constitute a gross violation of international law, call into further question Russia’s stated commitment to continue to engage in diplomacy.”
