U.S. President Joe Biden said he expects Russian President Vladimir Putin to order an invasion of Ukraine. Biden's statement on Wednesday is his latest grim assessment of the situation in Ukraine. Despite the diplomatic efforts by the U.S. and its allies, including threats of sanctions, Biden believes Putin will move forward with invading Ukraine.
Biden said he believes Putin will want to test the U.S. and Nato. During his nearly two-hour speech, Biden gave a stern warning to Russia, stating that Putin will pay a "serious and dear price" if he will regret ever making the decision of invading Ukraine.
When pushed further on what he meant, Biden clarified that he doesn't think Putin would order a full-scale invasion, but he might continue to send troops across the Ukrainian border. Biden said his best guess is that Putin will move in and try to take over the country.
Biden's comment is different from the current intelligence assessments made by other White House officials, who have said that Putin has yet to make a decision and that he would likely conduct a partial invasion of the country.
White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, issued a clarification of the president's remarks a half-hour after the president's news conference ended, saying that Biden would treat any move over the border as an invasion but was reserving judgment on how NATO would respond to other types of attacks.
According to Pentagon sources, such an invasion, aimed at dividing and destabilizing Ukraine, would most certainly expand Moscow's grip over the country's eastern regions, where a brutal struggle with Russian-backed rebels has been raging for the last eight years since Russia took Crimea.
There was no distinction between a small incursion into Russian-speaking territory in Ukraine and a full attack on the country, according to some of the president's own aides, who said in recent background briefings that there would be no distinction between a small incursion into Russian-speaking territory in Ukraine.
In Russia, Putin has increasingly characterized NATO's eastward expansion as a threat to his country's national security. Putin said its military buildup was merely a response to Ukraine's growing ties with the alliance. Putin claimed that NATO forces are gradually encircling Russia and that Ukraine's turn toward the West poses a huge security risk to Moscow.
Putin has advocated that the 1997 agreement between President Bill Clinton and Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin be scrapped. If Putin is successful in taking over Ukraine, he will have unwound the fundamental understandings of how European territories have been organized since the Soviet Union collapsed. Biden said Wednesday that such a decision would have much farther and more serious implications.
