Joe Biden accuses Vladimir Putin of flagrantly violating international law, in the 'beginning of a Russian invasion of Ukraine'

Tuesday, 22 February 2022

President Joe Biden ordered heavy US financial sanctions against Russian banks and oligarchs stepping up the West's confrontation with Moscow, even as Russian politicians authorised President Vladimir Putin to use military force outside their country.

Biden, in a brief address from the White House, accused Putin of flagrantly violating international law in what he called the “beginning of a Russian invasion of Ukraine,' and promised that more sanctions would be coming if Putin proceeds further.

US President Joe Biden has announced the US is ordering heavy financial sanctions against Russian banks and oligarchs, declaring that Moscow has flagrantly violated international law by its actions in Ukraine.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken says he has cancelled plans to meet his Russian counterpart in Geneva later this week as Russia presses ahead with recognition of separatist regions of Ukraine.

Blinken said that Russia's actions indicated Moscow was not serious about a diplomatic path to resolving the crisis. As a result, he said, he called off his Thursday meeting with Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

* Ukraine: NZ says recognition of breakaway republics is 'pretext for invasion'

* Ukraine-Russia: What to know about the escalating crisis

US President Joe Biden speaks about Ukraine in the East Room of the White House, saying 'none of us will be fooled' by Vladimir Putin's claims about Ukraine.

The US president joined the 27 European Union members who unanimously agreed to levy their own initial set of sanctions targeting Russian officials over their actions in Ukraine. Germany also announced it was halting the process of certifying the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia – a lucrative deal long sought by Moscow but criticised by the US for increasing Europe’s reliance on Russian energy.

“None of us will be fooled” by Putin's claims about Ukraine, the US President said.

Vladimir Putin meets with advisers “who sat 20 metres away .... like a class of schoolboys”, writes Joe Bennett.

Biden said he was also moving additional US troops to the Baltic states on NATO’s eastern flank bordering Russia. The prime minster of Estonia and presidents of Latvia and Lithuania on Friday had made a direct plea to Vice President Kamala Harris for the US to step up its presence in the Baltics.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy addresses his nation on a live TV broadcast in Kyiv, when he said that Ukraine is 'not afraid of anyone or anything”.

Biden said the US would impose “full blocking” on two large Russian financial institutions and “comprehensive sanctions” on Russian debt.

“That means we’ve cut off Russia’s government from Western finance,” Biden said. “It can no longer raise money from the West and cannot trade in its new debt on our markets or European markets either.”

The president announced what he called a first tranche of sanctions as Russian troops rolled into rebel-held areas in eastern Ukraine after Putin said he was recognising the areas' independence. It was unclear how large the Russian deployment was, and Ukraine and its Western allies have long said Russian troops were already fighting in the region, allegations that Moscow always denied.

Members of Russia's upper house, the Federation Council, voted unanimously to allow Putin to use military force outside the country – effectively formalising a Russian military deployment to the rebel regions, where an eight-year conflict has killed nearly 14,000 people.

Shortly after, Putin laid out three conditions to end the crisis that has threatened to plunge Europe back into war, raising the spectre of massive casualties, energy shortages across the continent and economic chaos around the globe.

Putin said the crisis could be resolved if Kyiv recognises Russia's sovereignty over Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula that Moscow annexed from Ukraine in 2014, renounces its bid to join NATO and partially demilitarizes. The West has decried the annexation of Crimea as a violation of international law and has previously flatly rejected permanently barring Ukraine from NATO.

The UN Security Council meets for an emergency session on Ukraine on Monday (Tuesday NZT).

Asked whether he has sent any Russian troops into Ukraine and how far they could go, Putin responded: “I haven’t said that the troops will go there right now.' He added that “it’s impossible to forecast a specific pattern of action - it will depend on a concrete situation as it takes shape on the ground.”

Ukraine's president has called up some of the country's military reservists as the threat of a Russian invasion grows, but says there is no need for a full military mobilisation.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a video address to the nation that he had signed a decree to that effect. “Today there is no need for a full mobilisation. We need to quickly add additional staff to the Ukrainian army and other military formations,'' Zelenskyy said.

He said the decree only applies to those assigned to the so-called operational reserve, which is typically activated during ongoing hostilities, and covers ``a special period of time,'' without clarifying what that means.

“Ukrainians are a peaceful nation, we want silence, but if we keep silent today, we will disappear tomorrow,'' Zelenskyy said. There are about 250,000 troops in Ukraine's armed forces.

The European Union has announced a first set of sanctions aimed at the 351 Russian lawmakers who voted for recognising separatist regions in Ukraine, as well as 27 other Russian officials and institutions from the defence and banking world. They also sought to limit Moscow’s access to EU capital and financial markets.

With tensions rising and a broader conflict looking more likely, the White House began referring to the Russian deployments in the region known as the Donbas as an “invasion” after initially hesitating to use the term – a red line that US President Biden had said would result in severe sanctions against Moscow.

“We think this is, yes, the beginning of an invasion, Russia’s latest invasion into Ukraine,” said Jon Finer, principal deputy national security adviser, said on CNN. “An invasion is an invasion, and that is what is underway.”

The Biden administration's rhetoric hardened considerably in less than 24 hours. The White House announced limited sanctions targeting the rebel-region after Putin said he was sending troops to eastern Ukraine. A senior Biden administration official, who briefed reporters about the sanctions targeting the breakaway region, noted “that Russia has occupied these regions since 2014” and that “Russian troops moving into Donbas would not itself be a new step”.

The administration initially resisted calling the deployment an invasion because the White House wanted to see what Russia was actually going to do. After assessing Russian troop movements, it became clear it was a new invasion, according to a US official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

Biden said he was authorizing the redeployment of some US troops who are already stationed in Europe to bolster the security of NATO’s Baltic allies, particularly in light of Russia’s troop build-up in Belarus.

Biden said, “These are totally defensive moves on our part” and the US has no intention of deploying its forces in non-NATO-member Ukraine. But Biden also said the US and its allies “will defend every inch of NATO territory and abide by the commitments we made to NATO.” The organisations' mutual-defence pact considers an attack on one member to be an attack against all.

People from the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, the territory controlled by a pro-Russia separatist governments in eastern Ukraine, watch Russian President Vladimir Putin's address at their temporary place in Rostov-on-Don region, Russia.

For weeks, Western powers have been bracing as Russia massed an estimated 150,000 troops on three sides of neighbouring Ukraine.

Western leaders have long warned Moscow would look for cover to invade – and just such a pretext appeared to come Monday, when Putin recognised as independent two separatist regions in eastern Ukraine, where government troops have fought Russia-backed rebels. The Kremlin then raised the stakes further by saying that recognition extends even to the large parts now held by Ukrainian forces.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg prepares to address a media conference after a meeting of the NATO-Ukraine Commission at NATO headquarters in Brussels on Tuesday. World leaders are getting over the shock of Russian President Vladimir Putin ordering his forces into separatist regions of Ukraine and they are focusing on producing as forceful a reaction as possible. Germany made the first big move and took steps to halt the process of certifying the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia.

Putin said Russia has recognised the rebel regions’ independence in the borders that existed when they declared their independence in 2014 – broad territories that extend far beyond the areas now under separatist control and that include the major Azov Sea port of Mariupol. He added, however, that the rebels should eventually negotiate with Ukraine.

Condemnation from around the world was quick. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he would consider breaking diplomatic ties with Russia and Kyiv recalled its ambassador in Moscow.

But confusion over what exactly was happening in eastern Ukraine threatened to hobble a Western response. While Washington clearly called it an invasion, some other allies hedged.

“Russian troops have entered in Donbas,” EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said in Paris. “We consider Donbas part of Ukraine.”

But he added: “I wouldn’t say that (it is) a fully fledged invasion, but Russian troops are on Ukrainian soil.”

Poland's Defence Ministry and British Health Secretary Sajid Javid also said Russian forces had entered eastern Ukraine, with Javid telling Sky News that “the invasion of Ukraine has begun”.

Not all in Europe saw it that way. Spanish Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares noted “if Russia uses force against Ukraine, sanctions will be massive.”

The Kremlin hasn't confirmed any troop deployments to the rebel east, saying it will depend on the security situation. Vladislav Brig, a member of the separatist local council in Donetsk, told reporters the Russian troops already had moved in, but more senior rebel leaders didn't confirm that. Late Monday, convoys of armoured vehicles were seen rolling across the separatist-controlled territories. It wasn’t immediately clear if they were Russian.

The Russian moves pushed Germany to suspend the certification process for Nord Stream 2 pipeline that was to bring natural gas from Russia. The pipeline was built to help Germany meet its energy needs, particularly as it switches off its last three nuclear power plants and phases out the use of coal, and it has resisted calls by the US and others to halt the project.

If Putin pushes further into Ukraine, NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg insisted the West would move in lockstep. “If Russia decides once again to use force against Ukraine, there will be even stronger sanctions, even a higher price to pay,” he said.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the UK would slap sanctions on five Russian banks and three wealthy individuals. He warned a full-scale offensive would bring “further powerful sanctions.”

Even as alarm spread across the globe, Zelenskyy sought to project calm, saying in an address overnight: “We are not afraid of anyone or anything. We don’t owe anyone anything. And we won’t give anything to anyone.”

His foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, is in Washington to meet with Secretary of State Antony Blinken, the State Department said.

Russia has long denied it has any plans to invade Ukraine, instead blaming the US and its allies for the crisis and describing Ukraine’s bid to join NATO as an existential challenge to Russia. Putin reiterated those accusations in an hourlong televised speech when he announced that Russia would recognise the rebels.

“Ukraine’s membership in NATO poses a direct threat to Russia’s security,” he said.