Russian-backed separatists fighting in eastern Ukraine announced an evacuation of their breakaway region's residents to Russia on Friday, heightening fears that Moscow was planning to use an escalation in the long-running conflict as a pretext to invade.
The move comes amid a spike in shelling in the area that has stoked fresh global alarm, with tensions rising once again after the United States and its allies disputed Moscow’s claims of a troop pullback from near its neighbor's borders.
Moscow announced large-scale drills involving its nuclear forces starting Saturday that will be overseen by President Vladimir Putin and will offer a timely reminder of the country’s nuclear might, as Europe faces its gravest security crisis since the Cold War.
President Joe Biden said Friday that the U.S. believes Putin has decided to invade Ukraine, but he also stressed that Russia could still "choose diplomacy."
"As of this moment, I’m convinced he’s made the decision. We have reason to believe that," Biden told reporters at the White House following a call with NATO and European leaders about Russian aggression against Ukraine. He cited U.S. intelligence for his assessment.
"It is not too late to de-escalate and return to the bargaining table," Biden added.
Russia now has between 40-50 percent of its military forces around Ukraine in attack position, according to a U.S. defense official. The troops are still several miles from the border, the official said, adding that they've reached this level of readiness in the last 48 hours.
But the focus of the world's concern Friday was eastern Ukraine.
Denis Pushilin, head of the self-proclaimed “Donetsk People’s Republic,” announced the evacuation in a video posted on social media. He claimed without evidence that Kyiv was planning its own military assault on the region in the country’s east where the Moscow-supported separatists have been fighting government forces since 2014. Leonid Pasechnik, leader of the neighboring self-proclaimed “Luhansk People’s Republic,” gave a similar order.
Russian state media later reported that Putin had ordered payments of 10,000 rubles ($130), hot meals and medical care to those who crossed the border.
There was no evidence Kyiv was planning such an attack, and Ukraine says that its forces have had to show restraint after an increase in cease-fire violations by the Russian-backed separatists they believe is a ploy designed to provoke Ukraine into retaliation.
“We categorically reject Russia’s attempts to aggravate the already tense security situation,” Ukraine’s military chief, Valerii Zaluzhnyi, said in a statement. He added that Russia had launched “a campaign to spread mass disinformation, increase shelling of Ukrainian positions and civilian infrastructure with weapons banned by the Minsk agreements, and escalate the security situation.”
His comments came around the same time that a blast destroyed a car outside a government building in the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk, according to an Associated Press journalist at the scene.
Wreckage could be seen outside the offices of the “Donetsk People’s Republic,” and Denis Sinenkov, the head of the Donetsk rebels’ military, said it was his car, according to the Interfax news agency.
Later, a spokesman for Ukraine's foreign ministry said Ukraine was not conducting or planning any sabotage acts.
The U.S. has warned for weeks of a “false flag” operation, which Russia could use as an excuse to trigger an attack or incursion into Ukraine.
