The US states that Russia has made plans for a large scale attack on Ukraine, and that Nato allies are prepared to impose severe costs on Moscow if it attempts an invasion.
Speaking at a Nato ministers meeting in Latvia, the US secretary of state Antony Blinken said it was not clear whether Vladimir Putin had made a decision to invade, but added that he was putting in place the capacity to do so in short order, should he so decide.
Despite uncertainty about intention and timing, we must prepare for all contingencies while working to see that Russia reverses course. He said that he had found solidarity among his fellow Nato ministers in the Latvian capital Riga, saying the alliance was prepared to impose severe costs for Russian aggression in Ukraine and would strengthen its defences on the eastern flank. However, the secretary of state stopped short of saying that the US or the alliance would intervene militarily. Should Russia follow the path of confrontation when it comes to Ukraine, we ve made clear that we will respond resolutely, including with a range of high impact economic measures that we have refrained from pursuing in the past, Blinken said.
He did not specify the nature of those measures, but most observers believe that the Nord Stream 2 pipeline project, intended to bring Russian gas to Europe, could be cancelled if there is another invasion. The new German coalition government is sceptical about the scheme.
Blinken said the US would spell out the consequences to Russia's leaders at the appropriate time. His remarks came a day before Blinken will meet his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, in Stockholm under increasingly tense circumstances.
Blinken pointed out that Russia has plans for significant aggressive moves against Ukraine and included efforts to destabilise Ukraine from within, as well as large military operations. According to the Ukrainian government estimates, the number of troops near its borders ranges from 90,000 to 100,000. Russian forces conducted two major military exercises in the region in April and September, and each time left a large number of troops and substantial supplies of equipment. Commercial satellites have shown concentrations of military vehicles.
Putin will hold a summit with Joe Biden in the near future, according to the Kremlin. The White House has signalled it is open to the idea but there is no date yet. On Wednesday, Putin proposed holding negotiations to make sure Nato would not accept new members along Russia's borders.
He said at a ceremony in the Kremlin that we will insist on developing concrete agreements that exclude further Nato advances to the east and the deployment of weapons systems that are threatening us in close proximity to Russian territory, in a dialogue with the United States and its allies. We propose to start substantive negotiations on this matter. Even Putin has denied that Russia's recent buildup near Ukraine is anything but defensive in nature, despite the suggestion that Russia and the US are in effect hammering out spheres of influence.
The Biden administration is trying to avoid being drawn into a situation where the US is negotiating Ukraine's future over the heads of the government in Kyiv and its European neighbours. In the hope of deterring the Russian threat, the policy emphasis has been on shoring up EU and Nato solidarity.
The placement of weapons systems in eastern Europe seemed to evoke earlier crises from his time in power, specifically the placement of air defence systems in Poland and Romania that Russia claimed could be a staging area for missile strikes on Moscow. Putin warned on Tuesday that if air defence systems are sent to Ukraine, Moscow could be forced to target Europe with missiles.
The accession of former Soviet and communist countries into Nato has been a bugbear of Putin, who claimed that the alliance violated the assurances given to the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev that it would not expand eastward.
Putin spoke at the Munich Security Conference in 2007 where he accused Nato powers of a serious provocation that reduces the level of mutual trust.