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Biden warns Putin on Ukraine

Pipeline’s halt among heavy costs of invasion, Russia told

COMPILED BY DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE STAFF FROM WIRE REPORTS

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden warned President Vladimir Putin of Russia on Tuesday that an invasion of Ukraine would result in heavy economic penalties for him and lead NATO to reposition its troops in Europe, measures that he said would go well beyond the West’s response to Russia’s annexation of Crimea seven years ago.

In a two-hour videoconference that American and Russian officials both described as tense but occasionally lightened by humor, Biden also said an invasion would end Russia’s hopes of completing the Nord Stream II gas pipeline to Europe, which would be a major source of energy revenue.

Hours after the negotiation was over, a senior State Department official, Victoria Nuland, confirmed that in a Senate hearing, saying, “I think if President Putin moves on Ukraine, our expectation is that the pipeline will be suspended.”

“There was no finger-wagging, but the president was crystal clear,” Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser, told reporters after the session, which Biden conducted from the White House Situation Room and Putin from his retreat on the Black Sea. But he said Biden had told the Russian leader that “things we did not do in 2014, we are prepared to do now.”

In recent days, American officials have said that

that list, being composed by the Treasury Department in collaboration with European allies, ranges from blocking Russian companies from access to global capital markets to financial penalties aimed at the Russian elite, especially the oligarchs who have helped finance and support Putin.

The most extreme step — one that is still being debated — would be to cut Russia off from the global financial settlement system, called SWIFT, but some European officials have feared that step might provoke too harsh a counterreaction.

It is too early to tell whether the much-anticipated conversation — whose details were hard to elicit, as both the White House and the Kremlin put their spin on it — will alleviate the immediate crisis in Ukraine, where roughly 100,000 Russian troops have massed, with more equipment and personnel arriving every day.

A White House readout of the call said Biden “voiced deep concern” about the Russian military escalation near Ukraine and pledged that the United States and allies would respond “in the event of military escalation.” He also called for a return to diplomacy.

A Kremlin summary said Putin blamed NATO for the current tensions, citing its “dangerous” support of Ukraine, including “building up military potential on our borders.”

Putin, the Kremlin said, emphasized its demand for “reliable, legally fixed guarantees excluding the expansion of NATO in the eastern direction and the deployment of offensive strike weapons systems in the states adjacent to Russia.”

‘PUTIN’S PLAYBOOK’

Putin gave no indication of his ultimate intent, U.S. officials said, or whether he was actually contemplating an invasion or trying to get the West to pay attention to his demands by manufacturing a crisis.

At stake is the continued independence of Ukraine, which won its independence after the fall of the Soviet Union, part of a collapse Putin has described as a tragedy of 20th-century geopolitics. And White House aides were highly aware that while their options were limited — there is no discussion of direct military involvement by the United States — failure to deter Putin could be seen as a sign of weakness around the world, especially by China.

While the two men met, Nuland of the State Department, who has angered Putin in past years because of her role in bolstering Ukraine’s ouster of a leader who was considered a puppet of Moscow, warned that the Russian leader seemed emboldened.

“Much of this comes right out of Putin’s 2014 playbook, but this time it is much larger and on a much more lethal scale,” she told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “So despite our uncertainty about exact intentions and timing, we must prepare with our allies and partners for all contingencies, even as we push Putin to reverse course.”

On Monday night, the director of the CIA, William Burns, a former U.S. ambassador to Russia, said that in the next few months — as the ground freezes in the marshy territory on the Russia-Ukraine border and Russia completes its military buildup — Putin may conclude that the time to act is ripe.

“I think tactically, as President Putin probably looks at this winter, at the next few months, he may see a more favorable landscape,” Burns said.

Speaking to a Wall Street Journal forum, he said that in Putin’s view the major European allies are “distracted with the transition beyond Chancellor [Angela] Merkel in Germany” and, with France preparing for presidential elections next spring, “he sees himself in a position of relative economic strength compared to where the Russian economy was a couple of years ago.”

Biden sought to change that view Tuesday, and Sullivan argued that because the Nord Stream pipeline was not yet operating, its fate was leverage for the United States and its allies.

LOW EXPECTATIONS

Ukrainian officials kept expectations low that Biden’s call with Putin would quickly lower tensions.

“Everything is possible in life, but I would not expect any breakthroughs,” Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, told a Kyiv talk show late Monday.

He expressed hope, however, that “Putin will hear clear signals from President Biden of what Ukraine’s partners will do if Putin launches a military operation against our country.”

Separatists supported by Moscow have battled Kyiv’s Western-allied forces in eastern Ukraine since 2014, the year Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine. Ukraine and the West have accused Russia of sending its troops and weapons to back the separatists, which Moscow has repeatedly denied, with the Kremlin insisting that Russia is not a party to the conflict.

The fighting between Ukrainian forces and the Russian-backed rebels has killed more than 14,000 people.

Security adviser Sullivan said Biden will talk to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Thursday, the Reuters news agency reported.

In recent days, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Zelenskyy spoke by phone to “coordinate their positions on key issues,” a statement from Zelenskyy’s office said Tuesday.

“In particular,” the statement said, the two discussed “the importance of enhancing security cooperation that would assist in deterring Russia’s aggressive behavior toward Ukraine.”

Although previous Ukrainian administrations have voiced a desire to join NATO, Zelenskyy raised the pressure this year for the alliance to issue Ukraine a “membership action plan” — effectively a road map spelling out the steps needed for Kyiv’s admission.

In November, NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg said in an interview with Axios that the alliance lacked a “consensus” about Ukraine’s membership, citing in part the country’s ongoing battle with corruption.

Ukrainian officials have also insisted that they needed to be part of any discussions that directly affected their country, such as the issue of possible NATO membership.

In an article published Sunday by the Toronto-based Globe and Mail newspaper, Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov called for military assistance from the United States, Britain and Canada outside the NATO framework to help deter Russia.

PIPELINE IN CROSS HAIRS

Zelenskyy’s administration also seeks to block the implementation of Nord Stream II, the $11 billion pipeline project linking Russia and Germany that will reduce Europe’s dependence on Russian gas via Ukraine.

Although the project was completed this summer, it still awaits final regulatory approval.

Ukraine at the moment is a major transit country for Russian gas. Once the new pipeline goes online, however, Ukrainian officials say that they will lose more than $1 billion in transit fees.

In November, Germany’s energy regulator announced that two Ukrainian gas companies would be part of the pipeline certification process, raising hopes in Ukraine that the project, which at one point seemed inevitable, could be held up.

PROVOCATIONS ALLEGED

Meanwhile on Tuesday, Ukrainian authorities charged that Russia is sending tanks and snipers to the line of contact in war-torn eastern Ukraine to “provoke return fire.”

Ukraine’s Defense Ministry released the statement just hours before the video call between Biden and Putin.

The ministry alleged that Russia is holding “training camps under the leadership of regular servicemen of the Russian Armed Forces” and “reinforcing units near the contact line … with additional 122-millimeter self-propelled artillery vehicles, tanks and infantry fighting vehicles,” as well as increasing the number of sniper teams in the area.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov refused to comment on the allegations, redirecting questions to Russia’s Defense Ministry, which has not yet commented.

U.S. intelligence officials have determined that Russia has massed about 70,000 troops near its border with Ukraine and has begun planning for a possible invasion as soon as early next year.

Moscow has denied plans to attack Ukraine and in turn blamed Ukraine for its own military buildup in the wartorn east, alleging that Kyiv might try to reclaim the areas controlled by the rebels by force.

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2021-12-08T08:00:00.0000000Z

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