After the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, President Joe Biden’s diplomacy appears to be failing in another conflict zone. The U.S. embassy in Ukraine is reportedly set to evacuate all “nonessential” diplomats and their families, indicating the worsening of hostilities as Russia builds up military on the country’s border.
“The Department of State is preparing to approve the evacuation of some U.S. diplomats and diplomats’ families from the embassy in Ukraine,” the ABC News reported Friday night.
The State Department move coincides with reports that Russia, too, has began evacuating families of its diplomats at the mission in Ukraine. The measure is seen a prelude to a Russian offensive after weeks of military deployment on the Uranian border.
The situation appears to have escalated after President Biden’s gaffe on Wednesday suggesting that Moscow would not face full-scale sanctions over a “minor incursion” into Ukraine. “Biden set off alarms in Kiev during his first solo press conference in 10 months when he initially vowed that ‘Russia will be held accountable’ if it launches an attack against Ukraine, but then softened his own vow by saying: ‘It depends on what it does’,” the New York Post noted.
Former President Donald Trump described Biden’s statement as “giving the green light” to Russian President Vladimir Putin to attack the tiny neighboring state.
In March 2014, Russia annexed Crimea, a strategically located peninsula in the Black Sea, from Ukraine. Moscow has since supported and armed pro-Russian militias wrestling for control of eastern Ukraine.
Russia is ratcheting up hostilities once again, with the U.S. and Western intelligence services warning of an imminent Russian invasion of the former Soviet Republic, after Russia amassed close to 100,000 troop on the border.
Amid the ongoing Russian military buildup, President Putin has demanded the NATO alliance withdraw from eastern Europe. The NATO roll back demand by Moscow would mean that East European countries like Poland and Baltic states would be without a NATO security cover in case of a Russian offensive — very nations Soviet Army invaded under the Hitler-Stalin Pact of 1939.
Russia demands “the withdrawal of multinational NATO battalions from Poland and from the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania that were once in the Soviet Union,” the Reuters noted.
The Associated Press on Friday reported Kremlin’s growing belligerence towards Ukraine:
With tens of thousands of Russian troops positioned near Ukraine, the Kremlin has kept the U.S. and its allies guessing about its next moves in the worst security crisis to emerge between Moscow and the West since the Cold War.Amid fears of an imminent attack on Ukraine, Russia has further upped the ante by announcing more military drills in the region. It also has refused to rule out the possibility of military deployments to the Caribbean, and President Vladimir Putin has reached out to leaders opposed to the West. (…)The military muscle-flexing reflects a bold attempt by the Kremlin to halt decades of NATO expansion after the end of the Cold War. In talks with the United States, Russia demands legally binding guarantees that the alliance will not embrace Ukraine and other former Soviet nations, or place weapons there. It also wants NATO to pull back its forces from countries in Central and Eastern Europe that joined the alliance since the 1990s.Putin has repeatedly asserted that Russians and Ukrainians are “one people,” and says large chunks of Ukrainian territory are historic parts of Russia — arbitrarily granted to Ukraine by Communist leaders during Soviet times.“Biden gaffe: President appears to allow Russian ‘minor incursion’ in Ukraine”
Amid rising tensions, UK media reports suggest that Putin may be planning a Soviet-style coup to install a pro-Russian government in Ukraine.
On Saturday, the British Foreign Office accused Moscow of plotting to replace Ukraine’s elected government with a pro-Kremlin administration. “Britain on Saturday accused the Kremlin of seeking to install a pro-Russian leader in Ukraine, and said Russian intelligence officers had been in contact with a number of former Ukrainian politicians as part of plans for an invasion,” the Reuters reported.
As Ukrainian armed forces gear up to face a possible Russian offensive, the first shipment of U.S. weapons arrived in Kyiv on Friday. The weapons delivery is part of the $200 million defensive military aid promised by Washington to the beleaguered nation. The shipment contains “close to 200,000 pounds of lethal aid, including ammunition for the front line defenders of Ukraine,” the U.S. embassy said.
While the U.S. arms the Ukrainian front line soldiers, Germany — a key NATO ally — is blocking weapons delivery to the country. “Germany’s defense minister has said that sending arms to Ukraine would not be helpful in defusing the current situation as fears of a Russian invasion continue to mount,” the German public broadcaster Deutsche Welle reported.
Germany is not only refusing military aid, it is reportedly forbidding Estonia from delivering any German-made weapons to their beleaguered neighbor. “Germany is blocking North Atlantic Treaty Organization ally Estonia from giving military support to Ukraine by refusing to issue permits for German-origin weapons to be exported to Kyiv as it braces for a potential Russian invasion,” The Wall Street Journal reported Friday.
The German move comes as the Nord Stream 2 pipeline project nears completion. The 760-mile Baltic Sea gas pipeline, co-owned by German and Russian energy companies, makes Berlin dependent on Russian energy supply.
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