US intelligence indicates that Russia plans to ‘crush’ Ukraine with a ‘greater form of brutality’, as Russian President Vladimir Putin said that diplomacy negotiations have ‘reached a dead end’.
National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan on Monday morning spoke of the prospect of Russia proceeding with a full-scale invasion, as Putin assembled his inner circle.
‘We believe that any military operation of the size, scope and magnitude of what we believe the Russians are planning will be extremely violent,’ Sullivan told NBC News’ Today show. ‘It will cost the lives of Ukrainians and Russians, civilians and military personnel alike.’
Sullivan continued: ‘But we also have intelligence to suggest that there will be an even greater form of brutality, because this will not simply be some conventional war between two armies.
‘It will be a war waged by Russia on the Ukrainian people to repress them, to crush them, to harm them.
‘And that is what we laid out in detail for the UN because we believe that the world must mobilize to counter this kind of Russian aggression should those tanks roll across the border as we anticipate they very well may do in the coming hours or days.’
Sullivan also told ABC News’ Good Morning America on Monday that ‘the likelihood that there’s a diplomatic solution, given the movements – the troop movements of the Russians, is diminishing hour by hour’.
The White House on Sunday night said that Biden had agreed ‘in principal’ to meet with Putin. US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken is scheduled to meet with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Thursday in Europe, ‘provided Russia does not proceed with military action’, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said.
‘Biden has ‘accepted in principle a meeting with President Putin following that engagement, again, if an invasion hasn’t happened’, Psaki said.
But Putin’s top aides on Monday advised him not to meet with Biden.
‘We’ve been negotiating for eight years, we’ve reached a dead end,’ Putin said during the meeting.
Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that there are no ‘concrete plans’ for a top-level meeting.
‘It’s premature to talk about any specific plans for organizing any kind of summits,’ Peskov said.
Russia has extended military exercises in Belarus, which were supposed to end on Sunday, indefinitely. More than 30,000 Russian troops and ballistic missile launchers and tanks remain on Ukraine’s northern border – within striking distance of the capital of Kyiv.
US troops on Saturday were pictured loading equipment into vehicles in Rzeszow, Poland, after Biden approved moving in nearly 5,000 troops in addition to 4,000 already in the country that is a Nato ally.
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