Biden and Putin will talk Saturday as US warns Americans to leave Ukraine in 48
National security adviser Jake Sullivan said Friday the two men would speak by phone, but didn’t say when.
Biden last spoke to Putin at the end of December. He is spending the weekend at the Camp David presidential retreat.
Earlier Friday, Sullivan warned a Russian assault on Ukraine could begin soon, including with bombs and missiles. He advised all Americans to depart the country for their own safety.
“Any American in Ukraine should leave as soon as possible, and in any event in the next 24 to 48 hours,” Sullivan said. “We obviously cannot predict the future, we don’t know exactly what is going to happen. But the risk is now high enough and the threat is now immediate enough that this is what prudence demands.”
“If a Russian attack on Ukraine proceeds, it is likely to begin with aerial bombings and missile attacks that could obviously kill civilians without regard to their nationality. A subsequent ground invasion would obviously involve the onslaught of a massive force,” he continued.
The warning came just before a senior defense official told CNN that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin had ordered 3,000 more soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division to deploy to Poland, joining the 1,700 already there. The soldiers are there to help Americans who may try to leave Ukraine.
Despite that message, Sullivan added that it’s not clear if Russian President Vladimit Putin has decided to invade Ukraine.
“I want to be crystal clear. A final decision has not been taken by President Putin, but we have a sufficient level of concern based on what we’re see on the ground and what our intelligence analysts have picked up that we’re sending this clear message and it remains a message that we have now been sending for some time. And it is an urgent message because we’re in an urgent situation,” Sullivan said.
Later, he said there was a “very distinct possibility” that Russia would act militarily, but couldn’t pinpoint when or how.
“I’m not going to get into intelligence information, but if you look at forces in both Belarus and in Russia on the other side of the Ukrainian border from the north and from the east, the Russians are in a position to be able to mount a major military action in Ukraine in day now,” he said.
US planning to pull observers from Ukraine, send troops to Poland
The fears over an invasion has led to the US planning to pull its impartial observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe mission in Ukraine as the security environment deteriorates, two sources familiar with the discussions said.
The Biden administration is also discussing the possibility of further reducing the number of staff at the US Embassy in Kyiv and pulling other US government employees out of Ukraine amid new US intelligence suggesting that Russia could move to attack Ukraine prior to the end of the Beijing Olympics next week.
The US has estimated…
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