Kremlin backs out of meeting with Biden, as intelligence reports reveal that Russia has ordered an attack on Ukraine

by mcardinal

Chris Lange, FISM News

 

The Kremlin is now saying news of a hastily-arranged summit between President Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin is “premature.” This comes after it was reported that a meeting was brokered by French President Emmanuel Macron following intelligence reports that Russian officials had been given the order to invade Ukraine. 

Biden had agreed to the meeting with Putin on the condition that Russia does not invade Ukraine. The flurry of activity in the Russia-Ukraine crisis forced the president to cancel his weekend trip to Delaware.

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki on Sunday said a summit between the two leaders would take place following scheduled talks between Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov this week, as long as Russia had not yet invaded its neighbor. Lavrov had requested the meeting with his U.S. counterpart, though the exact date has not yet been announced.

“As the President has repeatedly made clear, we are committed to pursuing diplomacy until the moment an invasion begins,” Psaki said in a statement. “President Biden accepted in principle a meeting with President Putin following that engagement, again, if an invasion hasn’t happened. We are always ready for diplomacy,” she added.

As of Monday morning, however, Moscow says the summit won’t take place.

This development heightens fears of an imminent Russian invasion of Ukraine, as Russian commanders already ordered troops to launch an offensive against their neighbors over the weekend, according to a U.S. intelligence report. Russia has now amassed as many as 190,000 forces surrounding Ukraine, and intelligence officials say 40-50% of them have moved into combat formation. 

Alongside diplomatic efforts by the West to stave off an invasion they describe as imminent, reports of shelling between pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine and Ukrainian government forces also ticked up over the weekend.

Russia’s FSB security service claims that a shell fired from Ukrainian territory destroyed a border guard post in Russia’s Rostov region over the weekend, though no casualties were reported. Russia’s RIA news agency released images of a demolished outhouse but provided no pictorial evidence of any projectile. Ukraine denies responsibility for any shelling of Russian territory and has previously accused Moscow of enlisting mercenaries to stage provocations with separatist-held eastern Ukraine to make it appear as though Ukraine is launching attacks. 

Amidst the various reports, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky became visibly irritated during a Security Council meeting on Sunday when he rebuked Western leaders for creating panic with continuous pronouncements of an impending Russian attack while failing to take decisive action against Moscow. Zelensky delivered a defiant speech, accusing various governments of “egotism,” “arrogance,” and “irresponsibility” in their handling of the crisis. He also demanded that Western leaders back up their sanctions saber-rattling by publicly specifying what those measures will entail, adding that economic penalties will be utterly useless if they occur only after a Russian invasion.

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 or after we will have no economy or parts of our country will be occupied. Why would we need those sanctions then?

Zelensky also decried “the security architecture of our world” today, calling it “brittle” and “obsolete.” “Action is needed,” he said. “This is not about war in Ukraine, this is about war in Europe.”

Blinken defended the West’s continued sanctions delay during a Sunday State of the Union appearance on CNN’s “Meet the Press,” saying, “The purpose of the sanctions in the first instance is to try to deter Russia from going to war. As soon as you trigger them that deterrence is gone.”

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