Ukraine Live Updates: Biden Condemns Putin and Announces New Sanctions
Washington and its allies called the Kremlin’s recognition of two separatist regions a blunt defiance of international law that risks war. Western officials said Russian troops have entered eastern Ukraine.
Michael D. Shear and
WASHINGTON — President Biden on Tuesday announced harsh new sanctions aimed at punishing Russia for what he called “the beginning of a Russian invasion of Ukraine,” joining European leaders in imposing severe economic consequences for blatant violations of national sovereignty.
Speaking from the East Room of the White House, Mr. Biden condemned President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia for his aggression against Ukraine, saying that the Russian action is “a flagrant violation of international law and demands a firm response from the international community.”
Mr. Biden said the United States is imposing “full blocking” on two large Russian financial institutions and “comprehensive sanctions” on Russian debt.
“That means we’ve cut off Russia’s government from Western finance,” he said. “It can no longer raise money from the West and cannot trade in its new debt on our markets or European markets either.”
He also said that the United States would impose sanctions on Russian elites and their families, an effort to ensure that those closest to Mr. Putin do not escape financial pain that is expected to hit hard for average Russian citizens.
Mr. Biden delivered his speech less than a day after Mr. Putin issued a decree sending troops into two separatist-held regions in Ukraine. Russia’s Parliament authorized the use of military force abroad on Tuesday, taking another step toward what Western officials fear could be an full-scale assault against Ukraine.
Western leaders said Russian troops have already entered Ukraine in what the president labeled an “invasion.”
But as the tough global response takes shape, Mr. Biden and his counterparts have struggled to balance the need to take swift and severe action while preserving the possibility of even greater sanctions on Russia if Mr. Putin escalates the conflict by attempting to seize the entire country — a war that could kill tens of thousands of people.
Mr. Biden said that he intends to ratchet up sanctions against Mr. Putin if Russia goes further than it has.
“Russia has now undeniably moved against Ukraine,” he said. “Today, I’m announcing the first tranche of sanctions to impose costs on Russia.”
He added: “We’ll continue to escalate sanctions if Russia escalates.”
Germany announced Tuesday that it would halt certification of a natural gas pipeline linking it with Russia. The British government said that it would sanction members of the Russian Parliament who voted to recognize the independence of the separatist areas and would create legislation to ensure that no British individual or company could do business with the regions, Donetsk and Luhansk.
“This is the first tranche, the first barrage of what we are prepared to do,” Prime Minister Boris Johnson told Parliament on Tuesday.
In the United States, Jon Finer, Mr. Biden’s deputy national security adviser, said that Russia’s forces had begun to move into Ukraine, declaring on CNN that “an invasion is an invasion, and that is what is underway.” But he and Mr. Johnson shared the same sentiment, saying that “we’ve always envisioned waves of sanctions that would unfold over time in response to steps Russia actually takes.”
Two European officials said Tuesday that Russia had sent troops into the area, but Russia’s Foreign Ministry denied having done so.
Mr. Putin remained defiant in the face of the worldwide condemnations of his decision to recognize the independence of the so-called Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics created after Russia fomented a separatist war in eastern Ukraine in 2014.
In what sounded like an ultimatum, he demanded that Ukraine recognize Russia’s claim to Crimea and relinquish its advanced weapons.
A deputy defense minister, Nikolai Pankov, said that Ukraine had gathered 60,000 troops to attack the Russia-backed separatist enclaves in the country’s east — a step that Ukraine denies having any plans to take.
“Negotiations have reached a dead end,” Mr. Pankov said in a televised speech. “The Ukrainian leadership has taken the path of violence and bloodshed.”
There was no immediate sign of major military escalation in eastern Ukraine, but fearful Ukrainians boarded buses out of the separatist areas as Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, urged his beleaguered nation to “keep a cool head” in the crisis.
Mr. Zelensky insisted that Ukraine would not yield territory, and his defense minister, Oleksiy Reznikov, appeared to be girding his country’s troops for battle.
“Ahead will be a difficult trial,” Mr. Reznikov said in a somber message released by the military. “There will be losses. You will have to go through pain and overcome fear and despondency.”
A day earlier, Mr. Putin delivered a long, fiery speech that described Ukraine as part of Russia, calling the government in Kyiv little more than a “puppet” of the United States and its leaders solely responsible for whatever “bloodshed” may come next.
“As for those who captured and are holding on to power in Kyiv,” he said, referring to the Ukrainian capital, “we demand that they immediately cease military action.”
WASHINGTON — Senators from both parties began working on Tuesday on a multipronged legislative response toward Russian aggression that would provide emergency funds for Ukraine’s defense, sanction Russia’s economy and create a task force to find ways to seize the wealth of Russian oligarchs, and possibly the riches of Russian’s president, Vladimir V. Putin.
Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, told local reporters in his state that an emergency spending bill and bipartisan sanctions legislation — long delayed in Congress — could pass when lawmakers return from a Presidents’ Day recess.
“I want a sanctions regime from hell next week,” Mr. Graham said. He also had a warning for the broader Russian public: “You can expect bad things to come your way.”
Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, said talks began Monday night and were gathering momentum on Tuesday, after senators argued fruitlessly for the past month over the size, shape and timing of a measure to impose sanctions legislatively.
The spending bill would intensify lethal aid to Ukraine and help the Defense Department fund troop deployments to NATO countries to the north and west of Ukraine. The sanctions bill will focus on the superrich oligarchs who have bolstered Mr. Putin.
“There is consensus among Democrats and Republicans that one of the soft underbellies of Putin’s world is the lavish lifestyles of the oligarchs that he supports to keep him in power,” Mr. Graham said.
Mr. Blumenthal said Germany’s action Monday to halt work on a major natural gas pipeline from Russia to Western Europe had removed the biggest sticking point to a sanctions bill. Some Republicans had been pressing hard for sanctions to cripple the NordStream 2 pipeline, but the Biden administration strongly opposed such an action until a Russian attack, fearing that it would splinter the trans-Atlantic alliance and undermine NATO unity.
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A key point from Biden's remarks: These sanctions against two Russian financial institutions are a “first tranche.” The White House wants to reserve the ability to take additional actions if Russian forces move deeper into Ukraine.
The president prepares the public for the likelihood that Russian forces will move beyond the two separatist regions where Putin said troops would be deployed yesterday. “He’s setting up a rationale to go much further. This is the beginning of a Russian invasion of Ukraine,” Mr. Biden said.
Reporting from Brussels
European sanctions, which include asset freezes and travel bans, are going to hurt targeted higher-income Russians, some of whom have a penchant for luxury on the continent — or at least that’s what the European Union’s top diplomat implied in a pointed tweet after announcing a first round of sanctions had been adopted unanimously.
No more :
— Josep Borrell Fontelles (@JosepBorrellF) February 22, 2022
Shopping in #Milano
Partying in #SaintTropez
Diamonds in #Antwerp
This is a first step. #WeStandUnited
(4/4)
Reporting from Washington
President Biden is frequently late for big speeches and today is no exception. White House officials initially said he would speak at 2 p.m. about the crisis in Ukraine, but later sent out an update to the schedule that moved the speech to 1 p.m. By 1:40 p.m., reporters had yet to be called to the East Room for the remarks.
Reporting from Brussels
The E.U.’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell, says European Union foreign ministers have unanimously adopted sanctions against Russia.
WASHINGTON — Fears of an armed conflict in Ukraine after Russia ordered troops into separatist territories pose a new threat to a global economy that has been struggling to emerge from the coronavirus pandemic and coping with record levels of inflation, analysts warned on Tuesday.
European countries and the United States are rolling out sanctions in response to the Kremlin’s actions, most of which are expected to target Russian banks and oligarchs. But they are expected to roil energy markets and fuel additional commodity price increases. The uncertainty follows a year of supply chain obstructions that have disrupted the flow of commerce around the world.
“Should the Russian incursion into eastern Ukraine turn into a full-fledged invasion, it is likely that the global and U.S. economies will absorb yet another supply shock,” said Joseph Brusuelas, chief economist at the audit and tax firm RSM US.
Mr. Brusuelas projected that an “energy shock” could shave 1 percent off the United States’ gross domestic product in the next year and push the inflation rate up to 10 percent. That could raise the need for policy support to help lower-income workers weather rising food, fuel and goods prices.
Oil prices approached $100 a barrel on Tuesday, the highest in more than seven years, and European gas futures spiked 13 percent after Russia ordered troops into separatist territories in Ukraine. Analysts said that an escalating conflict could also lead to widening credit spreads and weigh on global stock prices.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany said Tuesday that his country would halt certification of the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline that would link it with Russia.
Fallout from additional sanctions would most likely land more directly on European countries because of their heavy reliance on Russian natural gas.
“For the euro area economy, the main threat from tensions between Ukraine and Russia is a stagflationary shock in which financial conditions tighten and energy prices soar,” Claus Vistesen and Melanie Debono, economists at Pantheon Macroeconomics, wrote in a note to clients.
But the economic impact of the sanctions could be more muted than the saber rattling would suggest.
Economists at Capital Economics noted that Russia’s external debt and ties to other advanced economies have waned since the 2014 Crimea crisis, insulating its economy from efforts to cut it off from the global financial system. They predicted that the most likely sanctions measures could shave around 1 percent from Russia’s gross domestic product.
The Ukrainian economy will most likely face the most acute pain because of its fragile balance sheet and need for foreign assistance.
“At the risk of stating the obvious, the biggest economic impact will be on Ukraine,” Neil Shearing, group chief economist at Capital Economics, said. “Depending on the evolution of the conflict, this could be challenging to coordinate.”
Russian self-propelled howitzers were loaded onto a train car near Taganrog, Russia.
Brendan Hoffman and
As the world braces nervously to see how events unfold in Ukraine, the conflict has already been taking a toll. A funeral was held in Kyiv on Tuesday for Capt. Anton Sidorov, a 35-year-old Ukrainian intelligence officer killed three days earlier while serving on the frontline in eastern Ukraine. Tensions between Ukraine and Russia have been simmering since 2014, when the Russian military crossed into Ukrainian territory, annexing Crimea and fomenting a rebellion in the east.
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President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey cut short a three-day Africa trip and is heading back home to attend a virtual NATO summit on Wednesday, his office said. Turkey, a NATO member and ally of the United States, has been trying to walk a fine line between backing Ukraine and disrupting a complicated relationship with Russia. He told his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky in a phone call Tuesday that Russia’s recognition of Donetsk and Luhansk is “unacceptable,” his office said.
MOSCOW — President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia demanded Ukraine recognize Russia’s claim to Crimea and relinquish its advanced weapons, declaring what sounded like an ultimatum minutes after Russian state television showed Parliament authorizing the use of military force abroad.
The cascade of developments in Moscow on Tuesday evening offered the clearest signs yet that Mr. Putin was moving toward mounting a military operation against Ukraine. The goals of such an operation remained uncertain. But in setting out his demands on Tuesday, Mr. Putin made it clear that he was seeking to force a drastic political shift in Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, as well as to win control of a large area of the country’s east.
Mr. Putin added that he had not decided to send troops into Ukraine “right at this moment.” But asked whether one could resolve issues by force and “remain on the side of the good,” Mr. Putin made it clear he saw military action as a morally defensible course.
“Why do you think that the good must always be powerless?” Mr. Putin said. “I don’t believe so. I think that the good implies the ability to protect oneself. We will proceed based on this.”
Mr. Putin further laid the foundation for military conflict by declaring that Russia would recognize the sovereignty of the so-called Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics over the full territory that they claim. That includes a large area of eastern Ukraine that is currently controlled by the Ukrainian government, and includes several cities like Mariupol and Kramatorsk.
“We expect — and I want to emphasize this — that all contentious issues will be resolved in negotiations between today’s Kyiv authorities and the leadership of these republics,” Mr. Putin said. “Unfortunately, at this point in time, we understand that this is impossible because the hostilities there are still ongoing and, moreover, are tending to escalate.”
Mr. Putin signed decrees on Monday recognizing the separatist republics. But until Mr. Putin’s remarks Tuesday evening, it was not clear over what territory he would recognize their sovereignty.
Kyiv has refused to recognize or negotiate directly with the separatist authorities, characterizing them as Kremlin puppets.
In his news conference, Mr. Putin laid out a series of additional demands to Kyiv that, he said, the government must fulfill to resolve the situation “in a long-term, historical perspective.” He said Ukraine must recognize the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014, as Russian territory; declare that it will never join the NATO alliance and maintain “neutrality”; and give up all the weaponry that the United States and other Western countries have delivered to it in recent years.
“The most important point is a known degree of demilitarization of Ukraine today,” Mr. Putin said. “This is the only objectively controllable factor that can be observed and reacted to.”
Just before state television aired Mr. Putin’s news conference, it showed Russia’s upper house of Parliament approving a request from Mr. Putin to use military force abroad that had been made public only minutes earlier. A deputy defense minister, Nikolai Pankov, told the assembly that Ukraine had gathered 60,000 troops to attack the Russia-backed separatist enclaves in the country’s east — a step that Ukraine denies having any plans to take.
“Negotiations have reached a dead end,” Mr. Pankov said in a televised speech. “The Ukrainian leadership has taken the path of violence and bloodshed.”
Just after showing the vote, state television cut to the Kremlin, where Mr. Putin was shown holding an unscheduled news conference. He repeated his past, unfounded claims that Ukraine was carrying out a “genocide” of Russian speakers in eastern Ukraine. Asked about the potential use of force, Mr. Putin responded, “I didn’t say that the troops will go there right at this moment.”
Two European officials have said that Russia has already sent troops into the area, but Russia has denied having done so.
Mr. Putin signed a decree on Monday ordering Russia’s military to perform “peacekeeping functions” in the separatist territories, the same day that he recognized them as independent nations. But as of Monday evening in Moscow, the Russian Defense Ministry had not said it was deploying troops to the territories.
Valentina Matviyenko, the chairwoman of the upper house house of Parliament, said the use of military force was being approved to “stop this bloody civil war,” according to the Interfax news agency.
Reporting from Washington
President Biden’s remarks on Ukraine will be an hour earlier than previously announced, the White House said, coming at 1 p.m. Eastern. The reason for the change was not immediately clear, but American allies in Europe have already announced sanctions, putting pressure on the United States to deliver a similar announcement sooner.
In the last three and a half months, as U.S. officials watched President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia mount what appeared to be preparations to invade Ukraine, President Biden made three critical decisions about how to handle Russia’s provocations, according to interviews with more than a dozen senior administration officials and others who requested anonymity to discuss confidential meetings.
First, the president approved early on a recommendation to share intelligence far more broadly with allies than was typical, officials said. The idea was to avoid disagreements about tough economic sanctions by ensuring that everyone knew what the United States knew about Mr. Putin’s actions.
Second, Mr. Biden gave the green light for an unprecedented public information campaign against Mr. Putin. With the support of his top intelligence officials — and with a promise to protect the intelligence agencies’ “sources and methods” — the president allowed a wave of public releases aimed at preventing Mr. Putin from employing his usual denials to divide his adversaries.
Third, when it became clear this year that Mr. Putin was continuing to build up forces at Ukraine’s border, the president approved sending Ukraine more weapons, including Javelin anti-tank missiles, and deploying more troops to other countries in Eastern Europe as a show of solidarity with Ukraine and to reassure nervous allies on NATO’s eastern flank.
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Continue reading the main storyOn Monday night, as tensions deepened between Russia and Ukraine, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia ordered troops into two regions in eastern Ukraine where separatist forces are friendly to Moscow.
With dispatches from Times reporters on the ground, “The Daily” podcast analyzes why the crisis has deteriorated in the past few days and whether the orders are a precursor to a wider war.
This episode contains strong language.
Listen to ‘The Daily’: Russian Troops Advance
President Vladimir Putin has ordered soldiers into two regions in eastern Ukraine. What comes next?Reporting from Washington
President Biden will be delivering a speech on the situation in Ukraine at 2 p.m. this afternoon, the White House just announced. He is expected to impose severe sanctions on Russia for its actions yesterday, but it remains unclear how much economic punishment will be held back as a deterrent to further aggression by Vladimir Putin, the Russian president.
After failing to act themselves, some senators are demanding fast and severe action by President Biden to punish Russian aggression in Ukraine.
Calls for crippling sanctions are gaining steam in some quarters of Congress, but so are political aspersions. Perhaps most telling is the silence from Republican and Democratic leaders, who are divided on the politics of action and split by divisions within their respective caucuses.
The demands by some rank-and-file lawmakers for action are growing more strident.
“The time for taking action to impose significant costs on President Putin and the Kremlin starts now,” declared Senator Chris Coons, Democrat of Delaware and a key ally of the president’s.
Senator Jim Risch of Idaho, the senior Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said security assistance to Ukraine must ramp up now and demanded “strong and immediate sanctions.”
“If this administration wishes to have a strong and decisive reaction that will deter even more aggressive behavior, they should follow our lead — the world is watching, and decisive action is needed,” Mr. Risch said in a statement.
Just what “lead” Mr. Risch was referring to was unclear. A month of back-room efforts to unite around tough sanctions legislation came to nothing before the Senate left Washington last week for a Presidents’ Day recess.
The Senate’s caution was typified by the statement released by the Foreign Relations Committee chairman, Robert Menendez of New Jersey, who said on Monday evening: “To be clear, if any additional Russian troops or proxy forces cross into Donbas, the Biden administration and our European allies must not hesitate in imposing crushing sanctions. There must be tangible, far-reaching and substantial costs for Russia in response to this unjustified act.”
The Democrat did not explain what he meant by “additional Russian troops.” Troops were flowing in at the time of his statement.
Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, alluded on Tuesday to the collapse of Congress’s efforts to reach consensus on sanctions, suggesting that lawmakers had missed an opportunity to change Mr. Putin’s behavior.
Putin’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine makes clear he wasn’t going to b deterred by talk only Shld hv imposed some sanctions on Russia 4 threatening invasion as Republicans proposed
— ChuckGrassley (@ChuckGrassley) February 22, 2022
And other Republicans said Mr. Biden was to blame.
“Joe Biden has refused to take meaningful action, and his weakness has emboldened Moscow,” Senator Marsha Blackburn, Republican of Tennessee, said in a statement on Tuesday, echoing Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, who wrote on Monday, “Biden-Harris officials are to an enormous extent directly responsible for this crisis.”
More striking is the relative silence from congressional leaders. Both House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California, and the Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, said in recent days that Mr. Biden had the authority he needed to act, and expressed support for his diplomacy.
After meeting on Monday with Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain, Ms. Pelosi issued a statement calling Mr. Putin’s move “a thinly veiled attempt to mask what is a clear attack on Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.”
“We commend President Biden for his strong leadership and Prime Minister Johnson for his partnership,” she said.
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Reporting from London
The British government says that, in line with other Western countries, it will sanction members of the Russian Parliament who voted to recognize the independence of Donetsk and Luhansk. It will also create legislation to ensure that no British individual or company can do business with Donetsk and Luhansk.
Michael D. Shear and
The Biden administration said it is still debating on Tuesday morning what package of sanctions to unleash against Vladimir V. Putin, his friends and Russia’s financial system. But all the early indications suggested that officials planned to leave some in reserve in hopes of preventing a far larger attack on Ukraine that could cause tens of thousands of casualties.
Early Tuesday morning, Jon Finer, Mr. Biden’s deputy national security adviser, said that Russia’s forces had begun to move into Ukraine, declaring on CNN that “an invasion is an invasion, and that is what is underway.”
The choice of the word “invasion” was significant. That was the trigger for sanctions, and Mr. Biden angered the Ukrainian leadership when he suggested in a news conference that there might be lesser penalties for a “minor incursion.” Now that Mr. Putin has ordered forces into Eastern Ukraine, the administration, in its choice of words, is making clear that there is nothing minor about the operation.
But that still leaves open the question of how to calibrate the sanctions — because so far there have been no mass casualties. Mr. Finer quickly indicated that the administration could hold back some of its promised punishments in the hopes of deterring further, far more violent aggression by Mr. Putin aimed at taking the rest of the country.
“We’ve always envisioned waves of sanctions that would unfold over time in response to steps Russia actually takes not just statements that they make,” Mr. Finer said. “We’ve always said we’re going to watch the situation on the ground and have a swift and severe response.”
Overnight, Mr. Biden and his aides were consulting with allies, so that their response would be coordinated. But Prime Minister Boris Johnson pointed toward the direction they were leaning when he told Parliament on Tuesday that “this is the first tranche, the first barrage of what we are prepared to do and we hold further sanctions at readiness to be deployed along side the United States and European Union if the situation escalates still further.”
It is one of those situations where Mr. Biden has no truly good choices. If his response seems too mild, he will send the message to Mr. Putin that the world is not going to make him pay a big price for sending troops into the Russian-speaking eastern part of the country — replicating what happened when the Russian leader annexed Crimea in 2014. If he implements all of the sanctions, Mr. Putin may conclude that there is nothing left to keep him from attacking the rest of the country.
Mr. Biden discussed this dilemma at a news conference in January. He said that if an attack was “something significantly short of a significant invasion” he would impose sanctions, but only to the point that European allies go along. And several of those allies have more at stake, including their gas supplies. “I got to make sure everybody is on the same page as we move along,’’ Mr. Biden said.
That was the news conference where he used the phrase “minor incursions,” and then had to backtrack, promising sanctions if one Russian soldier goes into Ukraine. But his words were revealing about how he thinks about the problem. If “there’s Russian forces crossing the border, killing Ukrainian fighter, et cetera — I think that changes everything.”
Mr. Biden also said during that news conference that “the most important thing to do: Big nations can’t bluff,” a phrase that now leaves him open to criticism after saying for weeks that even one soldier crossing the border into Ukraine would trigger an entire barrage of sanctions against Russia.
Many of the nearly 5,000 troops from the 82nd Airborne Division who arrived in Poland last week are working with Polish forces to set up processing centers for tens of thousands of people, including Americans, who are expected to flee neighboring Ukraine if Russia launches a full-scale invasion of the country, U.S. military officials said.
The Biden administration has repeatedly said U.S. troops will not fight in Ukraine or rescue Americans trapped there by a Russian attack. But U.S. commanders and their counterparts in Poland have been preparing parts of several Polish military facilities and erecting tents for possible evacuees.
So far, American officials said, there have been few, if any, people who have sought to use the facilities. But a nationwide attack on Ukraine could result in one million to five million refugees, with many of them pouring into Poland, Pentagon officials have estimated.
That could lead to the largest flood of refugees in Europe since nearly a million Syrian refugees arrived in 2015, a surge that had a profound impact on European politics by bolstering far-right parties.
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Continue reading the main storyPresident Vladimir V. Putin of Russia recognized the independence of two territories in eastern Ukraine, Luhansk and Donetsk, that are largely controlled by Russia-backed separatists. Shortly afterward, Russian troops were ordered into the area, a move that threatened to sharply escalate the conflict. See how Russia and Ukraine could be edging closer to war in this series of maps.
Reporting from London
Britain’s Foreign Office has summoned Andrey Kelin, the Russian ambassador, in protest over what the office called “Russia’s continued undermining of Ukraine’s territory integrity and sovereignty and flagrant disregard” for international obligations.
Reporting from Berlin
The U.S. government welcomed Germany’s decision to halt certification of Nord Stream 2, President Biden’s spokeswoman said. “We have been in close consultations with Germany overnight and welcome their announcement,” Jen Psaki, Mr. Biden’s spokeswoman said on Twitter. “We will be following up with our own measures today.”
@POTUS made clear that if Russia invaded Ukraine, we would act with Germany to ensure Nord Stream 2 does not move forward. We have been in close consultations with Germany overnight and welcome their announcement. We will be following up with our own measures today.
— Jen Psaki (@PressSec) February 22, 2022
Reporting from Moscow
The day after Vladimir Putin’s announcement, we are still looking for signals on where things go from here. The Kremlin has hinted that it could recognize all of Ukraine’s Luhansk and Donetsk regions as part of the separatist “people’s republics,” potentially setting up a justification for a Russian offensive against Ukrainian forces. But the Russian Foreign Ministry says it remains open to talks with the West and claims that Russia has not yet deployed troops to the regions — despite the decrees signed by Putin ordering the Russian military to carry out “peacekeeping functions” there.
MOSCOW — The future of the Ukraine crisis on Tuesday hinged, in part, on a definition.
The Russia-backed separatists whose independence President Vladimir V. Putin recognized on Monday claim three times as much territory as they control. As Russian lawmakers on Tuesday moved to endorse the recognition, Moscow sent mixed messages on what Russia would define as the enclaves’ official boundaries.
The significance of that decision was potentially momentous.
If Russia chooses to recognize only the territory of Ukraine’s Luhansk and Donetsk regions that is currently controlled by the separatists, it could deploy Russian forces into that territory without using force.
But if it decrees that, as the separatists claim, the so-called Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics comprise the entirety of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions, then the Kremlin could cite that as justification to launch an assault against Ukrainian troops stationed at the front line.
On Tuesday, Andrei Rudenko, a deputy foreign minister, said Russia would recognize the separatist republics on the territory where their leadership “exercises its authority and jurisdiction,” Russian news agencies reported.
But later in the day, the Kremlin’s spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, provided a different characterization of the territory of the newly recognized statelets: “The boundaries that they proclaimed for themselves when these two republics were proclaimed.”
That seemed to signal that Mr. Putin was defining the “people’s republics” as having rightful sovereignty over all of Ukraine’s Luhansk and Donetsk regions, which include major cities like Mariupol and Kramatorsk that are currently under Ukrainian control. Asked to clarify whether the people’s republics included Mariupol, Mr. Peskov said, according to the Interfax news agency: “I have nothing to add. Those boundaries in which they exist and were declared.”
The ambiguity showed that Mr. Putin — as he has throughout his military buildup surrounding Ukraine — was trying to keep open multiple options for how to act in the coming hours and days.
Dmitri Khoroshilov, the vice speaker of the Luhansk People’s Republic Parliament, previewed what could be a worst-case scenario: a Russian offensive against Ukraine to win control of the entire territory of the two regions.
“We must call on Ukraine to voluntarily withdraw its troops” from all of the Luhansk region, Mr. Khoroshilov said on Tuesday, according to Interfax. “If this does not happen, I believe that a decision will be made that will allow peace to be established and to restore our territorial integrity on the full territory of the Luhansk People’s Republic.”
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Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on Tuesday that Germany would halt certification of the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline that would link his country with Russia, one of the strongest moves yet by the West to punish the Kremlin for recognizing two separatist regions in Ukraine.
The German leader’s announcement came hours after President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia ordered armed forces to the separatist regions, the so-called Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics.
Germany’s allies in Europe and the United States had been pressing Mr. Scholz for weeks to state publicly that the $11 billion pipeline, which was completed late last year and runs from Russia’s coast to northern Germany under the Baltic Sea, would be at risk of being blocked in the event of a Russian move against Ukraine.
“The situation today is fundamentally different,” Mr. Scholz told reporters in Berlin. “That is why we must re-evaluate this situation, in view of the latest developments. By the way, that includes Nord Stream 2.”
Ukraine’s government welcomed Germany’s decision. Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba called it “a morally, politically and practically correct step in the current circumstances.”
The Kremlin spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, said that Russia regretted the decision “because we’ve been reiterating this project has nothing to do with politics. And shouldn’t have. This is a purely economical, commercial project which, on top of mutual benefit, is meant to be a stabilizing factor for European gas market.”
Since November, the amount of natural gas arriving in Germany from Russia has plunged, driving prices through the roof and draining reserves, leaving all of Europe in an energy crunch. The pipeline, which is owned by a subsidiary of Gazprom, Russia’s state-controlled energy behemoth, has been filled with natural gas but had not gone online, pending approval from a German regulator.
The pipeline had been certified by Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government before she left office, the last step before the project was passed on to the regulator, who had said that the project might be approved as early as midyear.
But Tuesday’s announcement rescinds the previous government’s approval, and the project will now be re-examined under Mr. Scholz’s economy ministry, which is led by a member of the environmentalist Greens party. Since taking office, both Mr. Scholz and his minister have stressed the importance of diversifying Germany’s energy sources away from the heavy dependence on Russian natural gas.
Last year, Russian gas accounted for nearly 27 percent of the energy consumed in Germany, according to government figures, an increase that was expected to continue after the country shutters its last three nuclear power plants, scheduled in December, and works to phase out coal-burning power plants by 2030.
A full two-thirds of the gas Germany burned last year came from Russia.
Oleg Matsnev contributed reporting.
Steven Erlanger and
Poland’s minister of defense and the European Union’s foreign policy chief said on Tuesday that Russian military forces had entered separatist regions of eastern Ukraine that were recognized as independent states by President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia a day earlier.
The officials stopped short of calling it an invasion. “Russian troops have entered into Donbas. We consider the Donbas part of Ukraine,” the E.U. official, Josep Borrell, said in Paris, referring to the eastern Ukraine region that includes the areas claimed by the Russia-backed separatists.
“I wouldn’t say it is a fully fledged invasion,” Mr. Borrell said, “but Russian troops are on Ukrainian soil.”
Overnight, footage of army convoys moving through the separatist territories circulated on social media, but it has been difficult to determine whether they were Russian forces. Russia has had military personnel in the regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, known as the Donbas, since 2014. The Polish minister, Mariusz Blaszczak, did not specify whether he was referring to new Russian units sent into the area.
Russia’s military presence in the two breakaway areas of Ukraine has waxed and waned since the spring of 2014, when Moscow sent in troops and military hardware to support pro-Russian gunmen who seized government buildings and declared the establishment of “people’s republics.”
In a statement on the defense ministry’s Twitter account, the Polish minister said: “We confirm that Russian forces have entered the territory of the self-proclaimed republics. Therefore, they violated the Ukrainian borders and international law has been violated. Such actions are unacceptable.”
Poland and three Baltic States to the north — all of which share borders with Russia or Belarus, and are members of both the E.U. and NATO — have been pushing the European bloc to immediately impose sanctions on Russia. But they have met resistance from governments that believe Russia’s recent actions do not yet constitute an invasion.
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Continue reading the main storyGovernments around the world on Tuesday responded to the decision by President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia to recognize two separatist enclaves of eastern Ukraine and order troops to be sent in. Here is a sampling of comments from world leaders:
Turkey
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called Mr. Putin’s decision “unacceptable,” the state-run Anadolu news agency reported.
The Foreign Ministry said the decision constituted “a clear violation of Ukraine’s political unity and territorial integrity.”
Japan
Prime Minister Fumio Kishida called Mr. Putin’s actions “unacceptable” and declared that Japan would be ready to order sanctions against Russia along with its Western allies should Russian forces further invade Ukraine.
Although Mr. Kishida did not specify the measures under consideration, Japan’s Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper reported on Tuesday that it would include an export ban on semiconductors and other technology exports such as artificial intelligence and robots, as well as restrictions on Russian banks.
South Korea
President Moon Jae-in said: “The sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine must be respected. We must actively seek a peaceful solution through dialogue.”
He added: “Countries around the world should work together to ensure that the Ukraine issue can be resolved quickly and peacefully, and South Korea will actively participate in those efforts as a responsible member of the international community.”
Australia
“We cannot have threats of violence being used to seek to advantage nation’s positions over others,” Prime Minister Scott Morrison said. “That is not a peaceful world order that would be achieving that.”
Mr. Morrison pledged that if other governments imposed heavy sanctions against Russia, “We will be in lock step with them and we’ll be moving just as quickly.”
Italy
Prime Minister Mario Draghi expressed the “strongest condemnation” of Mr. Putin’s decision, calling it “an unacceptable violation of the democratic sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine.”
He added: “The path of dialogue remains essential, but we are already defining within the European Union measures and sanctions against Russia.”
SEVERODONETSK, Ukraine — As dawn broke on Tuesday in eastern Ukraine through an icy blue, overcast sky, Viktoria Gudyatskaya, 41, was boarding a train with her daughter, not waiting to learn how the Russian government’s recognition of two separatist regions, announced by President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia the night before, might play out militarily.
“It felt like he took a decisive step,” said Ms. Gudyatskaya, who had intended to leave anyway because of an escalation in fighting in the east but saw Mr. Putin’s speech as a final argument for getting out with her daughter, Svetlana, who is 14.
Two other families, lugging suitcases, some with toddlers on hips, boarded the early-morning westbound train, saying they were escaping possible violence. Ms. Gudyatskaya said she would live with a brother in Kyiv “until the situation clears up.”
Mr. Putin’s speech left Ukrainians, and Western governments, guessing as to what might come next. In an address that was partly a history lesson, Mr. Putin asserted that Ukraine had been “created by Russia” and should be part of it today, suggesting a claim to the entire country.
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, delivered a televised speech at 2 a.m. to urge calm, saying that the country would “keep a cool head” in the crisis. But he also said that it would not yield territory.
Ms. Gudyatskaya, who stood on the train platform in the chilly morning air a few hours later, with just one suitcase and unsure when she might return home, said she blamed Mr. Putin for her predicament.
“If they had another leader, they wouldn’t do this,” she said of the Russians. “The Russian people are fine.”
Already, the escalating fighting along the front line between Ukrainian government forces and the two enclaves, which began on Thursday, has grown close to her home in the town of Novoaidar. “We can hear it now through our closed windows,” she said of artillery shelling.
Svetlana, her daughter, who toted a backpack with rainbow-hued straps and said she wanted to become either a car mechanic or a nurse, said she wasn’t as worried as her mother.
“Everything is fine,” she said as she boarded the train. “Our guys will win. We will defeat Russia and Russia will fall apart.”
Ms. Gudyatskaya shook her head. “Faith is always good, Sveta,” she said. “But I am worried.”
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