Russia is in a position to “mount a major military action” -US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan
Russia has the troops in place to invade Ukraine “at any time” and American citizens should leave within the next 48 hours, the US has warned.
Russian naval drills took place in Crimea on Friday, while 10 days of military exercises continued in Belarus, to the north of Ukraine.
An invasion could start with aerial bombing that would make departures difficult and endanger civilians, the White House said on Friday. Moscow has repeatedly denied any plans to invade Ukraine despite massing more than 100,000 troops near the border.
A host of other countries have also urged their nationals to leave Ukraine. They include the UK, Canada, the Netherlands, Latvia, Japan and South Korea.
US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said Russian forces were now “in a position to be able to mount a major military action” in remarks seen as a clear escalation in the urgency of warnings from US officials. Mr Sullivan added that the administration did not know if Russian President Vladimir Putin had made a final decision to invade, but said that the Kremlin was looking for a pretext to justify military action, which he said could start with intense aerial bombardment.
The United States warned on Friday that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia could mount a major military assault on Ukraine at any moment, suggesting a crisis that had been building for months has reached a critical phase.
The Pentagon, which has ruled out deploying troops to defend Ukraine, sent 3,000 soldiers to neighboring Poland on Friday as tensions mounted, reinforcing the U.S. military personnel being dispatched to help NATO allies. A host of countries, fearing an imminent invasion, told their citizens to leave Ukraine. And President Biden spent more than an hour on a call with allies to discuss “diplomacy and deterrence,” the White House said.
Ukraine warned that drills by Russia and Russian-backed separatists had left the country all but encircled and its ports effectively blockaded, the latest evidence of a shift in tone after weeks in which Ukraine’s leaders had downplayed the threat of an attack.
