https://ift.tt/Vw8tZXa on Sunday extended its military drills in Belarus, along Ukraine’s northern border, after two days of sustained shelling in eastern Ukraine between Russian separatists and Ukrainian forces.
The Russian exercises with Belarusian forces had been scheduled to end Sunday. They were extended amid Russian President Vladimir Putin’s show of force along the Ukrainian border with the massing of some 150,000 troops, accompanied by naval exercises in the Black Sea to the south of Ukraine.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told CNN’s “State of the Union” show that the sharp increase in Russian troop deployments in recent weeks, cyberattacks on the Ukrainian defense ministry and major banks last week and now the new outbreak in fighting in eastern Ukraine that killed two Ukrainian soldiers, signal that Moscow is “following its playbook” ahead of large-scale warfare.
“Everything leading up to the invasion is already taking place,” Blinken said.
The separatists in eastern Ukraine have claimed that Kyiv’s forces are planning an attack there, which Ukraine denies.
At the Munich Security Conference over the weekend, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy questioned why the United States and its Western allies, who have vowed to impose swift and tough economic sanctions on Russia if it invades Ukraine, are not already doing so.
Blinken said, “As soon as you impose them, you lose the deterrence” to try to prevent an invasion, and if the West were to announce specific sanctions it would impose, Russia “could plan against them.”
The top U.S. diplomat said, however, “Until the tanks are moving” and missiles launched, Western leaders will “try to do everything to reverse” Putin’s mind, “to get him off the course he’s decided.”