Ukraine Live Updates: Biden Warns Invasion Still Possible Despite Russian Pullback Claim
The president said the United States has not verified the Russia has begun to withdraw troops and its forces “remain very much in a threatening position.”
WASHINGTON — President Biden said Tuesday that American officials had not verified Russia’s claim that it is pulling some troops back from Ukraine’s border, saying that Russian forces remain “very much in a threatening position” and that “an invasion remains distinctly possible.”
Speaking from the East Room of the White House, Mr. Biden vowed to “give the diplomacy every chance” to prevent a Russian invasion. But he also promised not to “sacrifice basic principles” according countries the right to determine the shape of their own borders.
The president said he had no intention of sending American troops to fight in Ukraine, which is not a member of the NATO alliance, but he noted that the United States has provided military equipment, intelligence and training to Ukraine’s government as its prepares for any invasion.
He also vowed to stand by NATO countries in the event that Russia — or any other nation — attacks the alliance.
“The United States will defend every inch of NATO territory with the full force of American power,” he said. “An attack against one NATO country is an attack against all of us. ”
Mr. Biden’s remarks came hours after Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, said his country had decided to “partially pull back troops,” and Russian military officials signaled that some of the forces on the border with Ukraine had been sent back to their garrisons.
American officials and their counterparts in other European countries have expressed skepticism about the Russian troop movements, saying the majority of Mr. Putin’s troop deployment remains poised to invade Ukraine quickly.
Jens Stoltenberg, NATO’s secretary general, said members of the alliance “have not seen any sign of de-escalation.” Russia has moved forces around before while leaving heavy weapons in place, Mr. Stoltenberg noted.
On Tuesday, Mr. Biden did not repeat the recent assessments from some administration officials that a Russian invasion was imminent. But his comments did not reflect a change in his administration’s overall judgment about the possibility that Russia will attack, White House officials stressed.
Mr. Biden has argued that agreement among European allies on a set of harsh sanctions is the best way to force Mr. Putin to accept diplomacy instead of an invasion.
“The United States and NATO are not a threat to Russia,” Mr. Biden said. “Ukraine is not a threat to Russia. Neither the U.S. or NATO have missiles in Ukraine. We do not, do not have plans to put them there as well. We’re not targeting people of Russia. We do not seek to destabilize Russia. To the citizens of Russia. You are not our enemy.”
Mr. Biden had a warning for Americans, too.
He said a Russian invasion that triggered severe economic sanctions could cause oil prices to rise, making it more difficult for the administration to fight the already damaging inflation in the United States.
“I will not pretend this will be painless,” he said.
Still, the president warned Mr. Putin that Russia’s economy will suffer even more if he decides to invade. The president specifically vowed to stop a proposed Russian natural gas pipeline that would serve Europe.
“When it comes to Nord Stream 2 pipeline that would bring natural gas from Russia to Germany, if Russia further invades Ukraine, it will not happen,” Mr. Biden said.
Earlier in the day, Mr. Putin said after a face-to-face meeting with Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany that Russia would continue pushing for its central demands: a rollback of NATO presence in Eastern Europe and a guarantee that Ukraine would not join the alliance.
Mr. Scholz suggested after the meeting that NATO might formally say that Ukraine’s membership in NATO “is not on the agenda” as a way of defusing the tensions.
MOSCOW — President Vladimir V. Putin said Tuesday that Russia had decided “to partially pull back troops,” and the Russian Defense Ministry announced that some forces from military districts bordering Ukraine were being sent back to their garrisons, a sign that Moscow might be stepping away from the threat of an invasion.
The announcement was the strongest signal yet that Russia might be trying to de-escalate the military standoff near the Ukrainian border, but it was far from clear that the threat of war has passed. Military analysts warned that it was too early to make firm conclusions about any troop drawdown without more information.
Only a day earlier, American officials, closing the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv, warned that an invasion appeared imminent. President Biden, addressing the situation in Ukraine on Tuesday afternoon from the East Room of the White House, said “an invasion remains distinctly possible.”
Earlier in the day, speaking at the Kremlin alongside Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany, Mr. Putin said Russia would keep pushing for its central demands of a rollback of the NATO presence in Eastern Europe and a guarantee that Ukraine never join the alliance.
“We are also ready to continue on the negotiating track, but all these questions, as has been said before, must be viewed comprehensively,” Mr. Putin said.
Later, in a briefing with German reporters, Mr. Scholz voiced frustration that the standoff continues, given that Ukraine’s prospective NATO membership — something the Kremlin calls a red line — is “not on the agenda.” NATO countries have made clear it would be years before Ukraine was considered, and Ukraine’s leader this week hinted the country’s membership aspiration could be up for negotiation.
“Everyone must step back a bit here and make it clear to themselves that we just can’t have a possible military conflict over a question that is not on the agenda,” Mr. Scholz said.
Since “all involved” know that to be true, he added, “it is a question of leadership ability for all involved — in Russia, in Ukraine, in NATO — to make sure that we don’t have an absurd situation.”
Despite Mr. Putin’s announcement of a pullback in troops, a Russian Defense Ministry spokesman, Igor Konashenkov, said that some military exercises that have raised fears of an attack against Ukraine — including in Belarus and in the Black Sea — would continue.
U.S. officials said they were still assessing Russia’s troop announcement, and the NATO secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, said that members of the alliance “have not seen any sign of de-escalation.” Russia has moved forces around before while leaving heavy weapons in place, Mr. Stoltenberg noted.
Still, Mr. Putin’s comments added to signs that Moscow is willing to pursue its objectives through negotiation, rather than launch immediate military action. When asked about how Russia would act next, Mr. Putin responded with a slight smile: “According to the plan.”
But the outcome, he said, “does not only depend on us.”
“We intend to and will strive to reach agreement with our partners on the questions that we posed, in order to solve them by taking a diplomatic path,” Mr. Putin said.
Moscow added some leverage to any talks when lawmakers in the Kremlin-backed lower house of Parliament asked Mr. Putin on Tuesday to recognize breakaway states in eastern Ukraine as independent. That raised fears that Russia could use such recognition to move more of its military into the areas.
Mr. Putin indicated at the news conference that he would not immediately recognize their independence.
The troops described as being pulled back are from the military districts closest to Ukraine, meaning they would remain relatively close to the country even if they are pulled back to their bases. The statement indicated that troops that have arrived in the region from farther away — Siberia and Russia’s Far East — would remain deployed near Ukraine for now.
Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, said that there was reason to be skeptical of Moscow’s statements. “When we see the withdrawal, we will believe in de-escalation,” he told reporters during a video briefing from Kyiv.
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Continue reading the main storyMilitary analysts caution that it is too early to make firm conclusions about a possible drawdown of Russian forces without more information about which units are being sent back to their bases.
The Russian Defense Ministry announced only a withdrawal of units from Russia’s Western and Southern Military Districts. Those districts are the closest to Ukraine and so the troops could be easily redeployed to the border.
Units from the Central and Eastern Military Districts, which are some of Russia’s most advanced, remain deployed, and in recent days have arrayed themselves in attack formations, some within a few dozen miles of Ukraine’s border, according to satellite imagery. In the last week, Russia has also deployed a number of attack helicopters and fighter jets in the vicinity of Ukraine, an indication, military analysts said, that the buildup, at least in some regions, continues.
“Yesterday and the day before, stuff was arriving in Belgorod — near the border — moving into a staging position,” said Rob Lee, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran and Ph.D. candidate at King’s College in London, who is a Russian military expert. “I wouldn’t read too much into this yet.”
Mr. Lee and others noted that Russia has in the past announced troop withdrawals only to leave weaponry equipment in place for easy redeployment.
That is what Russia’s defense minister, Sergei K. Shoigu, did after a similar buildup near Ukraine last April, as well as after large military exercises in late summer. The tactic allowed Russia to more rapidly build up its forces in the region starting in around October.
“What I’m concerned about is that they are playing shell games again, so they will withdraw and leave equipment in random places again,” said Dara Massicot, a senior policy researcher at the RAND Corporation.
Even if Russia does pull back a significant number of units from the Western and Southern Military Districts, it will still have sufficient forces to launch serious military incursions, particularly from the north in the direction of the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, as well as from the Crimean Peninsula. There, Russia has built up a massive troop presence that includes attack aircraft and rapid response special forces and airborne units, say Western and Ukrainian military officials and independent analysts.
The Russian Navy alone has sufficient forces deployed in the Black Sea and Sea of Azov to mount a significant amphibious assault on the Ukrainian coast, including perhaps 2,000 troops and nearly 200 tanks and armored vehicles loaded onto six large landing craft deployed from Russia’s Baltic and Northern Fleets.
Just because the Russian defense ministry “says they’re going back to their base, I’ll believe it when I see it,” said Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, the former commander of the U.S. Army in Europe.
At the moment, General Hodges said, there is not sufficient information to draw any conclusions about the significance of the defense ministry’s troop withdrawal statement.
“Are they being replaced?” he said. “Is this a rotation? It would be interesting to know what unit or units are being pulled back. Maybe these are the ones that have been there for the longest in the cold weather.”
KYIV, Ukraine— The websites of Ukraine’s defense ministry and army, as well as the interfaces of the country’s two largest banks were hit by cyberattacks on Tuesday, a Ukrainian government agency said.
The announcement came as Ukraine girds for a possible attack by Russian forces massing on its northern, eastern and southern borders.
The websites and banks were subject to a distributed denial-of-service attack, during which hackers flood the servers hosting a website until it becomes overloaded and shuts down, government and law enforcement services told Ukrayinska Pravda, a local news organization in Ukraine. The news outlet reported that the attack began at 3 p.m. in Ukraine.
On Tuesday, clients of the state-owned PrivatBank and Oschadbank began to complain about difficulties using teller machines and mobile phone applications. The banks confirmed the attack, but said the funds in users’ accounts had not been affected, though users said they had been temporarily unable to withdraw money or use their credit cards. Some clients of the banks were worried, as their bank balances appeared drained. However, users reported by Tuesday evening that some services had been restored.
“It is possible that the aggressor resorted to the tactics of petty mischief, because by and large, his aggressive plans do not work,” the government agency, the Center for Strategic Communications and Information Security of Ukraine, said in a statement posted to Facebook, in an apparent reference to Russian president Vladimir V. Putin.
Pavlo Kukhta, an adviser to Ukraine’s energy minister, said in an interview that the hackers were possibly preparing for a larger attack, which could target the country’s “vulnerable” power grid.
“The goal is quite simple: to sow panic, show what they are capable of, test the systems and see if they are vulnerable,” he said. “They are poking around and looking for weaknesses.”
Tuesday’s attack came as German Chancellor Olaf Scholz was meeting with President Putin of Russia in an attempt to ease tensions between Moscow and the NATO allies over the Russian troop buildup at Ukraine’s borders.
In mid-January, hackers brought down dozens of Ukrainian government websites, according to Ukraine’s ministry of foreign affairs.
That hack came hours after a breakdown in talks between Russia, the United States, and other NATO countries intended to prevent a Russian invasion of Ukraine. Ukraine blamed Russia for the hack.
Late last year, as fears of a possible Russian invasion escalated, the United States and the United Kingdom sent cyberwarfare experts to Ukraine in order to help the country prepare to defend against a potential attack.
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Continue reading the main storyKYIV, Ukraine — An exodus of wealthy Ukrainians by private jet in recent days as the threat of a Russian invasion looms has drawn criticism from the country’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, who has urged them to return quickly.
Mr. Zelenksy complained on Monday that the departure of at least some members of the Ukrainian elite on private and chartered airplane flights undermined his appeals to Ukrainians to remain calm and avoid panic. “I personally would like to ask them to return to the country within 24 hours,” Mr. Zelensky said at a news conference.
Mr. Zelensky said that 30 private planes had flown out of Ukraine as of Monday. Ukrayinska Pravda, a Ukrainian news outlet, counted 20 leaving over the weekend. In addition to businessmen, at least 23 members of the Ukrainian Parliament had left, the outlet reported.
Mr. Zelensky also suggested that the politicians return. To demonstrate that his family remains in Kyiv, Mr. Zelensky posted a video on Valentine’s Day on Monday, hugging his wife and saying they were at home in Ukraine.
Ukraine’s richest man, Rinat Akhmetov, a steel and coal tycoon, left the country at the end of January. After the president publicly objected to the departures by the wealthy, a spokesperson for Mr. Akhmetov said on Tuesday that the tycoon would return on Wednesday.
One of the Parliament members who left, Vadym Novynsky, was back in Kyiv as of Tuesday. He said he had attended a relative’s birthday party in Germany, and dismissed the idea that he had left because of the warnings from the United States that Russia might attack Ukraine.
“I do not coordinate my trips with American officials,” Mr. Novynsky said.
The president and his ministers, in nearly every public appearance, have emphasized the need to avoid panic.
In response to the U.S. assessment that military action could come as soon as Wednesday, Mr. Zelensky, declared the day a new holiday to be called the Day of Unity. The day is intended to commemorate Ukraine’s “resilience in the face of growing hybrid threats, information and propaganda, moral and psychological pressure on the public consciousness.”
After meeting with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia on Tuesday, Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany made an unusually impassioned appeal for more diplomacy in the standoff with Russia over Ukraine, saying that it was “our damned duty” to prevent war in Europe.
But Mr. Scholz also pulled no punches in criticizing Moscow for bullying critics at home and abroad.
The German leader’s talks with Mr. Putin came after a week of frenzied diplomacy, which was capped by the United States closing its embassy in Kyiv on Monday as it warned of an imminent Russian invasion. Then on Tuesday, Russia made a surprise announcement about a partial troop withdrawal from the Ukrainian border.
Even as many remained skeptical about the withdrawal and waited to see independent confirmation of it, Mr. Scholz used a joint news conference with Mr. Putin to describe it as a “good sign.”
“Everyone now has to act courageously and responsibly,” the chancellor said, standing several meters away from Mr. Putin. “For my generation, war in Europe has become unthinkable. And we have to make sure it stays that way. It is our damned duty and responsibility as heads of state and government to prevent a war escalating in Europe.”
It was an uncharacteristically forceful performance by the new German chancellor, who has been in office for only two months and was conspicuously absent in the early rounds of public diplomacy. Over the past week, he has met with other Western leaders almost every day.
The three-hour meeting with Mr. Putin on Tuesday in Moscow was the first one-to-one talk between the two leaders.
At the news conference afterward, Mr. Scholz advocated a return to direct dialogue and said Germany and its allies in the European Union and in NATO stood ready to take “concrete steps to improve mutual or, even better, common security.”
But he also laid down some red lines, declaring that Ukraine’s territorial integrity and sovereignty “are nonnegotiable for us.”
For the first time since December, Mr. Scholz also publicly mentioned the name of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline that connects Russia with Germany under the Baltic Sea, though he still stopped short of explicitly saying that it would be abandoned in the event of an invasion. The pipeline, not yet operational, would make Germany more dependent on Russia and deprive Ukraine of transit fees.
“Regarding the pipeline, everyone knows what’s going on,” Mr. Scholz said, vowing “far-reaching consequences” in the event of an invasion.
Mr. Scholz was equally direct in addressing Mr. Putin’s silencing of critics at home, not least Aleksei A. Navalny, the most prominent challenger to Mr. Putin’s rule, who has accused Mr. Putin of ordering his security agencies to assassinate him and is serving a prison sentence. Mr. Navalny’s conviction “is not compatible with the rule of law,” Mr. Scholz said.
Mr. Scholz also noted the closure of Memorial, Russia’s oldest human rights group, and urged Mr. Putin to allow it to resume its work.
When Mr. Putin made unsupported allegations about genocide in the Donbass region of Ukraine and drew a comparison to the situation that prompted NATO’s intervention in Bosnia in 1992, Mr. Scholz swiftly dismissed the analogy, saying the events in the former Yugoslavia had been “different.”
“There was a risk of genocide and it had to be prevented,” he said.
While he was forthright about his differences with Mr. Putin, Mr. Scholz kept returning to the theme of diplomacy, casting the current crisis over Ukraine and the most serious threat to peace Europe had faced in generations.
“For us Germans, but also for all Europeans, it is clear that sustainable security cannot be achieved against Russia — only with Russia,” Mr. Scholz said. He added: “We must not end up in a dead end. That would be a misfortune for all of us.”
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Continue reading the main storyIn a sign that Russia was prepared to keep the pressure on Ukraine despite reportedly pulling back some troops from border areas, its Kremlin-controlled lower house of Parliament, the State Duma, passed a resolution on Tuesday requesting that President Vladimir V. Putin recognize the Russian-backed separatist territories in Ukraine’s east as independent states.
Such a move would represent Russia’s abandonment of the 2015 peace plan for those territories, and could raise the risk of warfare between Russia and Ukraine. The separatists claim all of Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk regions as their territory, but control only about one-third of those lands.
Vyacheslav Volodin, the speaker of the Duma, said the resolution would be signed and transmitted to Mr. Putin “without delay.”
The resolution in effect gives Mr. Putin another bargaining chip in his talks with Western leaders and another point of leverage over Ukraine. In a news conference with Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany on Tuesday, Mr. Putin repeated false claims that Ukraine is carrying out a “genocide” against Russian speakers in the region, known as the Donbas, but indicated that he would not immediately recognize the territories’ independence.
Instead, Mr. Putin said that he would keep pushing for implementation of the Minsk peace accords negotiated by Russia, Ukraine, Germany and France in 2015. In their Russian interpretation, the accords would in effect rule out NATO membership for Ukraine by allowing Russian-backed proxies in eastern Ukraine to veto foreign-policy decisions.
Western diplomats dispute Russia’s interpretation of the accords, but they see their implementation as one way out of the current crisis.
“We must do everything to solve the problems of the Donbas, but we must do this, as the federal chancellor said, by working from the not fully realized possibilities of the implementation of the Minsk agreements,” Mr. Putin said, referring to Mr. Scholz.
Jens Stoltenberg, NATO’s secretary general, said that if Russia did recognize Donetsk and Luhansk it would be “a blatant violation of Ukrainian sovereignty again,” as well as a violation of international law and of the Minsk agreement.
“There is no doubt that Donetsk and Luhansk are part of Ukraine within internationally recognized borders,” Mr. Stoltenberg told reporters in Brussels.
WASHINGTON — President Biden has ruled out sending U.S. troops to fight in Ukraine, but American-made weapons are already there in force and more could be on the way. How effective they would be in turning back a Russian invasion is another question.
Since 2014, the United States has committed more than $2.7 billion in security assistance to Ukraine, according to the Pentagon, including a $200 million package in December comprising equipment like Javelin and other anti-armor systems, grenade launchers, large quantities of artillery, mortars and small-arms ammunition.
But military experts say that with 130,000 troops on three sides of Ukraine, the Russian Army could quickly overwhelm the Ukrainian military, even one that is backed by the United States and its European allies. Ukrainian forces stretched thin by defending multiple borders would have to prioritize which units received advanced weaponry and extra ammunition.
Ukrainian troops — trained in recent years by U.S. Army Green Berets and other NATO special forces, and better equipped than in Russia’s last invasion in 2014 — would likely bloody advancing Russian troops. But a long-term Ukrainian strategy, American officials said, would be to mount a guerrilla insurgency supported by the West that could bog down the Russian military for years.
“All of this equipment and training will help the Ukrainians resist in an insurgent form and conventionally,” said Evelyn Farkas, who served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia in the Obama administration.
Sending weapons to Ukraine is important, said James G. Stavridis, a retired four-star Navy admiral who was the supreme allied commander at NATO, but even more pivotal may be less visible countermeasures: American intelligence to help pinpoint Russian forces and new tools to defend against crippling cyberassaults and to counterattack Russian military communications.
Catie Edmondson contributed reporting.
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Continue reading the main storyThe United States temporarily relocated its C.I.A. station in Kyiv on Tuesday, a day after the State Department announced its diplomatic corps would move to Lviv, a western city near the border with Poland, because of the Russian military buildup near Ukraine, according to officials briefed on the shift.
Removing C.I.A. officers from Kyiv could make collecting information on Russian activity inside Ukraine more difficult. The U.S. has been working to collect intelligence, declassify it and expose what officials have called various Russian plots to undermine or replace the Ukrainian government.
On Monday, the State Department also recommended that U.S. citizens leave Belarus and Transnistria, a Russian-backed breakaway region in Moldova. Both Belarus and Transnistria neighbor Ukraine.
The department had said on Saturday that it would move most of its diplomatic staff in Kyiv to Lviv, but not all, indicating that it would keep the embassy operating. A department spokesman, Ned Price, declined to say at a news briefing on Monday how many people remained in Kyiv and were covered by the decision to shut the embassy.
Amid fears of a Russian invasion, the United States has strongly urged its citizens to leave Ukraine and has ordered some personnel and their families out of the country.
Kyiv lies within easy reach of Russian forces massed in western Russia and in Belarus. Lviv sits nearly 300 miles farther west, close to Ukraine’s border with Poland.
“I have no higher priority than the safety and security of Americans around the world, and that, of course, includes our colleagues serving at our posts overseas,” Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said in a statement.
Among those who have already relocated to Lviv, Mr. Price said, is Kristina A. Kvien, the embassy’s chargé d’affaires — the person in charge of an embassy when no ambassador is present. He said Ukrainian police would protect the compound in Kyiv.
“It is certainly our intention to return to that Embassy in Kyiv just as soon as it is safe for us to do so,” Mr. Price said.
A reporter and a photographer for The New York Times set off on a journey to explore what it means to be a Ukrainian at this moment of national peril. For 560 miles, they followed the Dnieper, a sickle-shaped river that stretches the length of Ukraine, physically separating the country’s western regions from the lands to the east, long considered to be more susceptible to Moscow’s gravitational pull. See the full story here.
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Continue reading the main storyFor decades, Germany has been a steadfast consumer of Russian natural gas, a relationship that has seemingly grown closer over the years, surviving Cold War-era tensions, the breakup of the former Soviet Union and even European sanctions against Moscow over its annexation of Crimea. Until this winter.
Since November, the amount of natural gas arriving in Germany from Russia has plunged, driving prices through the roof and draining reserves. These are changes that Gazprom, Russia’s state-controlled energy behemoth, has been regularly pointing out.
“As much as 85 percent of the gas injected in Europe’s underground gas storage facilities last summer is already withdrawn,” Gazprom said on Twitter a couple of weeks ago, adding that “facilities in Germany and France are already two-thirds empty.”
With tensions between the West and Russia over Ukraine — a key transit country for Russian gas — showing few signs of easing, Germany’s new minister for the economy and climate change, Robert Habeck, has begun to raise an issue that was unthinkable just a year or two ago: looking beyond Russia for the country’s natural gas needs.
“The geopolitical situation forces us to create other import opportunities and diversify supply,” Mr. Habeck, who is a member of the environmentalist Greens, said last week. “We need to act here and secure ourselves better. If we don’t, we will become a pawn in the game.”
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Tracking Russia’s Latest Military Movements Around Ukraine
Videos, satellite images and social media posts reveal the scale and intensity of Russia’s military deployments near Ukraine’s border.
U.S. officials are warning that Russia could invade Ukraine in a matter of days. Russia says its buildup of troops and weapons is part of planned military exercises. Satellite images, social media videos and photos show the scale and intensity of some of Russia’s latest deployments. The situation is volatile, and Russia’s military movements continue to cause fear and confusion. Satellite imagery from Sunday shows the arrival of new equipment, and vehicles being repositioned at a site just 17 miles from Ukraine. U.S. officials and independent military experts say at least half of Russia’s battalion tactical groups, which are designed for ground combat, have been deployed near Ukraine. Vehicles transporting short-range ballistic missile systems called Iskanders appear to be moving closer to the border, as seen here in Western Russia in February. Satellite images show that these types of weapons were also moved to a site in Belarus in January, putting them within range of Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv. And in mid-February, there was a new addition to the site: a field hospital. Another field hospital was also set up in Crimea, the part of Ukraine that was seized by Russia in 2014. In the same area, satellite images show a new camp for troops, which could indicate a higher level of military readiness. And in Belarus, videos show this Krasukha-4, one of Russia’s most powerful electronic warfare systems, about 50 miles from Ukraine. It has a range of up to 186 miles, and is typically used to interfere with military aircraft radar systems. Russia has also deployed helicopters, and more than half of these ground-attack aircraft recently arrived at an airfield in Belarus. It is also moved landing ships from Northern Europe that can transport tanks, armored vehicles and troops. Russia says 30 of its ships are taking part in live-fire exercises, but the fleet is also effectively blocking Ukraine’s ports, and further encircling the country.
U.S. officials are warning that Russia could invade Ukraine in a matter of days. Russia says its buildup of troops and weapons is part of planned military exercises. But U.S. officials and independent military experts say at least half of Russia’s battalion tactical groups, which are designed for ground combat, have been deployed near Ukraine.
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KYIV, Ukraine — For Ukraine, joining the NATO security alliance is an aspiration enshrined in its constitution. And although Western leaders say membership is a distant prospect at best, Russia regards even the possibility as an existential threat.
That dispute is at the core of Russia’s menacing military buildup surrounding Ukraine. The United States and NATO have said that the decision to seek membership should be up to individual countries, and in public Ukrainian officials have insisted that there is no change in their position.
But on Monday, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine did not rule out the possibility of dropping his country’s bid to join NATO, saying: “Maybe the question of open doors is for us like a dream.”
While emphasizing that NATO membership “is for our security and it is in the constitution,” Mr. Zelensky, speaking at a news conference alongside Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany, acknowledged the difficult place the country finds itself in, nearly completely encircled by Russian or Russian-backed forces, and with partners like the United States insisting it will not send troops into Ukraine to repel a Russian invasion.
“How much should Ukraine go on that path?” Mr. Zelensky said of NATO membership. “Who will support us?”
Mr. Zelensky was responding to a question about comments made by Vadym Prystaiko, Ukraine’s ambassador to Britain, who told BBC radio on Sunday that his government was “flexible in trying to find the best way out” and was considering dropping the country’s NATO ambitions.
Since December, the Ukrainian government has been quietly pursuing negotiations that could lead to acceptance of some form of neutrality, or another solution more narrowly focused on Russian demands in a cease-fire agreement in the long-running conflict in eastern Ukraine.
In public, officials including the current foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, have rejected concessions as counterproductive and likely only to encourage further Russian aggression.
Mr. Prystaiko, a former foreign minister who served under President Zelensky, was asked in the BBC interview: “If it averts war, will your country contemplate not joining NATO, dropping that as a goal?”
He replied: “We might, especially being threatened like that, blackmailed like that, and pushed to it.”
While emphasizing that even commenting on the possibility could be seen as violating Ukrainian laws, he went on: “What I’m saying here, is we are flexible in trying to find the best way out. If we have to go through some serious concessions, that’s something we might do, that is for sure.”
His comments caused a stir, and the Ukrainian government quickly sought to clarify the matter. The spokesman for Ukraine’s foreign ministry, Oleh Nikolenko, tweeted that Mr. Prystaiko’s comments had been reported out of context. “Ukraine’s position remains unchanged,” he said. “The goal of NATO membership is enshrined in the constitution.”
Mr. Prystaiko later emphaisized in an interview with Yevropaiska Pravda, a Ukrainian news outlet, that “there are no changes now” to the country’s stance. But because Ukraine is not a member of the alliance, he said, in the current standoff with Russia “we cannot count on NATO because we are not a member of the family.”
The Kremlin spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, welcomed the ambassador’s comments while acknowledging the response from the Ukrainian foreign ministry.
“Clearly, Ukraine’s confirmed rejection of the idea of joining NATO would be a step that would significantly facilitate the formulation of a better response to Russia’s concerns,” Mr. Peskov said on Monday. But given the confusion around the comments, he added: “We cannot interpret it as a fact that Kyiv’s conceptual worldview has changed.”
Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III will meet with NATO leaders in Brussels on Tuesday to discuss Russia’s military buildup around Ukraine, the Pentagon announced on Monday.
Mr. Austin will then go to Poland to visit American troops and to Lithuania to meet with Baltic leaders, said John F. Kirby, the Pentagon’s chief spokesman.
Speaking on Monday, Mr. Kirby told reporters at the Pentagon that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia was still prepared to strike at Ukraine, and dismissed Russian assertions that the buildup of some 130,000 troops was simply seasonal land and naval drills.
“It strains credulity to think that they would have this many troops arrayed along the border with Ukraine and in Belarus simply for winter exercises,” he said.
The Pentagon on Friday ordered 3,000 additional troops to Poland, bringing to 5,000 the number of reinforcements sent to Europe in the past two weeks.
The purpose of the troops, nearly all from the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, N.C., will be to reassure NATO allies that while the United States does not intend to send troops into Ukraine, President Biden would protect America’s NATO allies from any Russian aggression. Poland borders Ukraine, Russia and Belarus, a close ally of Russia.
Also on Monday, Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Lt. Gen. Valery Zaluzhny, the commander in chief of Ukraine’s military, discussed the “security environment in Eastern Europe” during a phone call, the Joint Staff said in a statement.
“Ukraine is a key partner to NATO and plays a critical role in maintaining peace and stability in Europe,” it said.
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