Russian-backed separatists announce civilian evacuation from eastern Ukraine as
Ukraine’s defense ministry later tweeted that it had intelligence that Russian forces had planted explosives in buildings in Donetsk, and it urged people to stay home and not use public transport.
As hopes for a diplomatic solution to the crisis faded, the State Department said that Secretary of State Antony Blinken will meet Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Europe next week — provided Russia does not attack its neighbor beforehand.
Vice President Kamala Harris also reiterated U.S. support for NATO and efforts to strengthen the group’s defenses during a meeting with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg in the German city of Munich.
“As a member of NATO, we feel very strongly about and will always be committed to the principle of territorial integrity and sovereignty,” Harris said at the start of the meeting.
Harris will meet with a series of world leaders on Friday and Saturday while attending the annual Munich Security Conference.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is also set to attend the conference, but the Biden administration is concerned that Putin will somehow exploit his absence, four people familiar with the matter told NBC News.
A spokesperson for Zelenskyy said he was planning to attend but was “observing the situation, which is getting more and more dramatic.” They added that if there was “a dramatic escalation or some worrying messages, then he might change his mind.”
Back in Washington, President Joe Biden hosted a call Friday afternoon with “transatlantic leaders” to discuss “Russia’s buildup of military troops on the border of Ukraine and our continued efforts to pursue deterrence and diplomacy,” a White House official said. The president also plans to give public remarks Friday to provide an update on the U.S. diplomatic effort.
Shortly before Biden’s scheduled remarks, deputy national security adviser for cyber and emerging technology Anne Neuberger told reporters that the U.S. believes that Russia was responsible for widespread cyberattacks against Ukrainian banks earlier this week.
“While of limited impact, this recent spate of cyber attacks in Ukraine are consistent with what a Russian effort could look like, and laying the groundwork for more disruptive cyberattacks accompanying a potential further invasion of Ukraine sovereign territory,” Neuberger said.
The U.S. is also going to announce it is sending around 200 American troops and Stryker armored fighting vehicles to Hungary, two defense officials told NBC News. The group is in the European Command area and will move in the coming days, said the officials, who were not authorized to speak publicly.
Ukrainian government troops have been fighting the Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine since 2014 — when Moscow annexed Crimea and threw its weight behind the breakaway forces — in a simmering conflict that’s claimed some 14,000 lives.
The conflict has been closely watched over fears it could become a source of potential escalation in the broader crisis. And this week, with Russia massing as many as 150,000 troops around Ukraine’s borders and the West saying they have seen no sign of a claimed pullback, there has been an uptick in the violence.
Moscow has consistently denied it has any plans to invade its neighbor. It said Friday it was closely watching the escalation of shelling in eastern Ukraine, describing the situation as potentially very dangerous.
Ukraine meanwhile, said the Moscow-backed separatists were “placing its artillery systems near residential buildings” in the hope Kyiv’s forces would return fire. A day earlier, Kyiv said the Russian-backed separatists were responsible for “a big provocation” after the shelling of a kindergarten in territory controlled by the Ukrainian government.
“We are constantly faced with provocations, shelling, cyberattacks, dangerous maneuvers of aviation, disabling of mobile communications,” Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov told the country’s parliament Friday.
On the other side, Russian-backed separatist forces in the breakaway Luhansk and Donetsk areas reported more shelling by Ukrainian forces along the tense line of contact early Friday. Ukraine’s military chief, Zaluzhnyi, responded that “our actions are purely defensive.”
Monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe said they recorded almost 600 cease-fire violations in total Thursday, a huge spike compared with recent months.
As a policy the OSCE does not tend to attribute blame.
Associated Press, Reuters, Oksana Parafeniuk, Rebecca Sinderbrand and Courtney Kube contributed.
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