For weeks, U.S. officials have been tracking a buildup of Russian forces by the border with Ukraine and warning allies of the possibility of a new offensive. An unclassified U.S. intelligence analysis, reported last week by The Washington Post, found the Kremlin is making plans for an invasion that could come early next year and include as many as 175,000 forces.
The White House believes Putin has not decided yet whether to proceed. The Kremlin has denied any such plans, accusing Washington of fueling a war scare.
“The President of the United States informed me of the content of his negotiations with Putin,” Zelensky said after the conversation ended. “We also discussed possible formats for resolving the conflict in Donbas and touched upon the course of internal reforms in Ukraine.” Donbas is the region in eastern Ukraine where Russian-backed fighters are battling Ukrainian forces.
Biden also held a call Thursday with the “Bucharest Nine” — a group of NATO members on Europe’s eastern flank that includes Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Slovakia, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Romania and Bulgaria. Because of their proximity to Russia, those countries are highly sensitive to any sign that Moscow is taking an aggressive posture toward its neighbors.
Thursday’s call between Biden and Zelensky came as top Russian officials issued warnings on Ukraine that further raised tensions in the region and sought to cast Kyiv as an aggressor that Russia had little alternative but to confront — a framing that Ukrainian officials reject.
Russia seized the Ukrainian territory of Crimea in 2014, and since then has provided support to pro-Russian rebels in Ukraine’s eastern region. The United States and Europe have denounced those actions as illegal, but Russia says Ukrainian citizens friendly to Russia are under threat from the government in Kyiv.
Putin told Russia’s Human Rights Council on Thursday that Russophobia is the “first step toward genocide,” reviving the sort of arguments about Russian people in Ukraine that the Kremlin promoted in the run-up to its first invasion in 2014.
“What’s happening now in the Donbas — you and I can see it — we know is very reminiscent of genocide,” Putin said.
Gen. Valery Gerasimov, chief of the Russian military’s general staff, warned the government in Kyiv against using military force to reclaim disputed territory held by Kremlin-backed separatists in the country’s east. Gerasimov said any such actions by Kyiv would be suppressed by Moscow — and warned that deliveries of drones, aircraft and helicopters to Ukraine from the West were “pushing Ukrainian authorities towards abrupt and dangerous steps.”
“Information being spread in the media about Russia allegedly preparing an invasion of Ukraine is a lie,” Gerasimov said during a meeting in Russia with foreign military attaches.
He said NATO countries were paying excessive attention to Russia’s troop movements on its own soil, and described the domestic redeployment of units during combat training as “a routine practice for the armed forces of any state.”
Meanwhile, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova accused Ukraine on Thursday of moving heavy weaponry toward the conflict zone in the Donbas region, saying peace talks on the conflict had reached a dead end. Russia’s Federal Security Service also warned that a Ukrainian warship was moving toward the Kerch Strait and not responding to calls by Russia to change course.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Thursday it was abundantly clear that Russia, not Ukraine, was the aggressor in the current situation.
In a statement after his call with Biden, Zelensky said he had thanked the U.S. president for his consistent support for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.
Putin has warned that the military activities of NATO countries in and around Ukraine have crossed Russia’s red lines and has called for a written guarantee that the U.S.-led military alliance will not expand eastward, a request the White House has rejected.
During his call with Putin, Biden agreed to engage in talks on Russia’s security concerns in Europe, including the question of NATO activities.
On Thursday, Biden said the U.S. and Russian teams had been in constant contact since the call and expressed hope that by Friday the White House would announce high-level meetings on the matter between Russia, together with four major NATO allies.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said such talks were necessary. If the United States and its NATO allies continue on their current trajectory and do not come to appreciate Russia’s concerns, he said, it could lead to tension akin to the 1962 Cuban missile crisis.
“We certainly could suddenly wake up and see something similar to that, given the logic of the unfolding events,” Ryabkov said, according to Russian state news agency RIA Novosti. “That will be a failure of diplomacy. But there is still time to try to come to an agreement on a sensible basis.”
David Stern and Isabelle Khurshudyan contributed reporting.