President Joe Biden has again called on President Vladimir Putin to pull back more than 100,000 Russian troops massed near Ukraine’s borders.
And warned that the US and its allies would “respond decisively and impose swift and severe costs” if Russia invades, according to the White House.
President Biden spoke with President Vladimir Putin today to make clear that if Russia further invades Ukraine, the U.S. and our allies will impose swift and severe costs on Russia. President Biden urged President Putin to engage in de-escalation and diplomacy instead. pic.twitter.com/HqK0b65kFm
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) February 12, 2022
According to a readout of the hour-long call, Mr Biden told Mr Putin that an invasion would “produce widespread human suffering and diminish Russia’s standing”.
The US remains committed to diplomacy, but was “equally prepared for other scenarios”, according to the White House.
The two presidents spoke the day after Mr Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, warned that intelligence shows a Russian invasion could begin within days and before the Winter Olympics in Beijing end on February 20.
The Biden administration has been warning for weeks that Russia could invade Ukraine soon, but US officials had previously said the Kremlin would most likely wait until after the Games ended so as not to antagonise China.
Mr Sullivan told reporters on Friday that US intelligence shows Russia could take military action the during the Olympics.
Russia denies that it intends to launch an offensive against Ukraine.
Before talking to Mr Biden, Mr Putin had a telephone call with French President Emmanuel Macron, who met with him in Moscow earlier in the week to try to resolve the biggest security crisis between Russia and the West since the Cold War.
A Kremlin summary of the call suggested that little progress was made toward cooling down the tensions.
A Kremlin statement about the Putin-Macron call referred to “provocative speculations about an allegedly planned Russian ‘invasion’ of Ukraine”.
Russia has consistently denied that it plans military action against its neighbour.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he told his Russian counterpart on Saturday that “further Russian aggression would be met with a resolute, massive and united trans-Atlantic response”.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy tried to project calm as he observed military exercises on Saturday near Crimea, the peninsula that Russia seized from Ukraine in 2014.
“We are not afraid, we’re without panic, all is under control,” he said.
US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin and his Russian counterpart, Sergei Shoigu, also held telephone discussions on Saturday.
