U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken landed in Kyiv on January 19 in a show of support amid mounting fears that a Russian invasion of Ukraine could be imminent.
In Ukraine’s capital, Blinken is scheduled to meet with President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and other top Ukrainian officials, before heading to Berlin on January 20 for four-way talks with Britain, France, and Germany to seek Western unity.
On January 21, the top U.S. diplomat is set to meet with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, in Geneva. The two spoke by phone on January 18.
With Russia massing an estimated 100,000 troops along Ukraine’s borders and a sizable new force being deployed for snap exercises in Belarus, alarms are sounding throughout Western capitals about the danger of a new major conflict.
“This is an extremely dangerous situation. We’re now at a stage where Russia could at any point launch an attack on Ukraine,” White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki told reporters January 18.
Russia’s deployment of forces along Ukraine’s border, and in the annexed region of Crimea, is one of the largest unscheduled massing of forces since March 2014, when Moscow first seized the Black Sea peninsula. Russia is also backing separatist fighters in an ongoing war in eastern Ukraine that has claimed more than 13,200 lives since April 2014.
Moscow has denied any plans to attack Ukraine and accused NATO of planning to admit the country as a member of the alliance, as well as deploy offensive weaponry there.
Last week, Russian diplomats met with top officials from the United States, NATO, and European nations to discuss the sweeping demands Moscow has made, which amount to a major restructuring of Europe’s security architecture.
The talks yielded no breakthroughs, and that, plus belligerent rhetoric from Moscow, has alarmed Western officials.
There is growing concern in Washington that a possible Russian attack could come via Belarus, where strongman Alyaksandr Lukashenka is clinging to power with the support of Russian President Vladimir Putin following large-scale popular protests against his brutal 27-year rule.
A senior State Department official told reporters that Russian forces in Belarus were “neither an exercise, nor normal troop movement. It is a show of strength designed to cause or give false pretext for a crisis as Russian plans for a possible invasion.”
Describing Blinken’s planned meeting with Lavrov, the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that it “suggests that perhaps diplomacy is not dead.”
In Berlin, Blinken will meet with German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock and also hold talks with officials from Britain and France.
The meetings will focus on “joint efforts to deter further Russian aggression against Ukraine” including the allies’ “readiness to impose massive consequences and severe economic costs on Russia,” according to State Department spokesman Ned Price.
The United States and its Western allies have warned of severe consequences for Moscow if Russia launches a new offensive in Ukraine.
After meeting Lavrov in Moscow on January 18, Baerbock said Berlin was ready to defend fundamental values in the conflict with Russia over Ukraine, even if this means paying “a high economic price.”
Germany, which has deep economic ties with Russia, has come under pressure from the United States and other NATO allies to be more forceful in its stance toward Moscow.
Olaf Scholz, who has been Germany’s chancellor for less than two months, said on January 18 that Berlin was ready to discuss halting the Nord Stream 2 pipeline project should Russia attack Ukraine.
The undersea pipeline, which has been built but has not yet secured approval to open, would bring more Russian gas to Western Europe. Opponents, including Washington, say it will make Berlin more dependent on Moscow.
“It is clear that there will be a high price to pay and that everything will have to be discussed should there be a military intervention in Ukraine,” Scholz told reporters.
