The discussions got here because the State Division ordered all family members of U.S. embassy personnel in Kyiv to leave Ukraine, citing the specter of Russian army motion, and licensed some embassy staff to depart as nicely, based on senior State Division officers who briefed reporters on Sunday. The officers, who additionally spoke on the situation of anonymity as a result of they weren’t licensed to remark, declined to say what number of embassy personnel and members of the family have been within the nation. Scaling down workers at American embassies is a standard precaution when conflicts or different crises come up that might put American diplomats in hurt’s method.
In his information convention final week, Mr. Biden stated he had cautioned Mr. Putin {that a} Russian invasion of Ukraine would immediate Washington to ship extra troops to the area.
“We’re going to truly enhance troop presence in Poland, in Romania, et cetera, if the truth is he strikes,” Mr. Biden stated. “They’re a part of NATO.”
Throughout a cellphone name this month, Protection Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III warned his Russian counterpart, Sergey Shoygu, {that a} Russian incursion into Ukraine would most certainly end result within the precise troop buildup that Mr. Biden is now contemplating.
On the time of the cellphone name — Jan. 6 — the Biden administration was nonetheless making an attempt to be extra restrained in its stance on Ukraine. However after unsuccessful talks between Mr. Blinken and the Russian overseas minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, on Friday, the administration is eying a extra muscular posture, together with not solely diplomatic choices like sanctions, however army choices like growing army help to Ukrainian forces and deploying American troops to the area.
“That is clearly in response to the sudden stationing of Russian forces in Belarus, on the border, basically, with NATO,” stated Evelyn Farkas, the highest Pentagon official for Russia and Ukraine in the course of the Obama administration. “There is no such thing as a method that NATO couldn’t reply to such a sudden army transfer on this political context. The Kremlin wants to grasp that they’re solely escalating the state of affairs with all of those deployments and growing the hazard to all events, together with themselves.”
A former prime Pentagon official for Europe and NATO coverage, Jim Townsend, stated the administration’s proposal didn’t go far sufficient.
