There are indications that Russia is planning “the biggest war in Europe since 1945,” British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said in an interview with the BBC. “There are all signs that the plan, in a sense, has already begun.” According to intelligence services, Russia plans to invade Ukraine and surround the capital Kiev, the prime minister said. Johnson fears the invasion will cost many lives.
According to the latest US government estimates, the number of troops along the Ukrainian border, both in Belarus and Russia, is between 170 thousand and 190 thousand. The West fears that the Russians could attack at any moment, but Moscow has so far denied that it intends to do so, saying it will only hold military exercises in the region.
Johnson tells the BBC that US President Joe Biden has told western leaders that intelligence agencies expect Russia to invade Ukraine not only through the east, through the Donbas region, but also from Belarus and the region around Kiev. “I fear that the plan we are seeing is for something that could truly be the biggest war in Europe since 1945, in scale alone,” the prime minister said. People had to consider not only the possible loss of Ukrainian lives, but also that of “young Russians,” he added.
Speaking to the BBC after meeting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Johnson told world leaders in a speech at a Munich security conference that any invasion of Ukraine by Russia would “echo around the world.”
The full interview will be broadcast on the BBC on Sunday morning.
Rocket Launches
The Russian exercise on Saturday deployed the Black Sea Fleet, which has its home port in Crimea, the peninsula that Russia conquered from Ukraine in 2014. Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Belarusian counterpart Alexander Lukashenko watched from the Kremlin on Saturday how cruise missiles and a hypersonic missile were launched from warships and submarines.
On Saturday, a group of parliamentarians and foreign journalists came under fire, according to a spokesman for a Ukrainian ruling party in eastern Ukraine. Two Ukrainian soldiers are said to have been killed by artillery fire from separatists, which are controlled and armed by Russia. The government army and separatists have been embroiled in a war in eastern Ukraine since 2014 that has already killed more than 14,000 people. A ceasefire established after peace talks in 2015 is being violated almost daily.
The Russian news agency TASS says a grenade fell just over the Russian-Ukrainian border in the Rostov region on Saturday. There would have been no casualties, but in that area are many thousands of evacuees who left the cities of Donetsk and Luhansk on Friday. Ukraine denies that shells landed in Russia.
State of emergency
The authorities in Rostov have declared a state of emergency due to the influx of evacuees. On Putin’s orders, they will receive about USD 130, an amount equal to half of the average monthly income in Donbass. Earlier, Russia handed out 700,000 Russian passports to residents of eastern Ukraine.
However, according to German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, Ukraine has done nothing to necessitate the mass evacuation of civilians. Germany urges its citizens to leave Ukraine. On Monday, the German airline Lufthansa will temporarily stop flights to Ukraine. NATO is also removing its personnel from the Ukrainian capital Kiev.
Two separatist leaders in eastern Ukraine called on all men to prepare for war. According to Denis Pushilin, separatist leader in Donetsk, mobilization is needed because of “immediate threat of aggression” by the Ukrainian army. However, there are fears that Russia will stage an incident as justification for an invasion. According to the Associated Press news agency, the metadata of the videos in which the separatists announced the evacuation on Friday showed that those images had already been recorded two days in advance.
The United States has previously warned that disinformation with pre-recorded video footage could be used as a trigger for a Russian raid. According to the Americans, Putin would like to attack Kiev ‘within days’.
‘Mercenaries’
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dymitro Kuleba said on Twitter that his government is “completely committed to a diplomatic solution” and that Ukraine is not behind the violence in the east. According to unconfirmed reports from Ukrainian government sources, “mercenaries” arrived on Saturday in separatist-controlled areas, seeking “provocations with the aim of accusing Ukraine of further escalation.”
Lithuania is concerned that Russia wants to attack other former Soviet states after Ukraine and argues for a different course: the west should strengthen the defenses of the Baltic states and Poland, instead of trying to use words to prevent Russia from attacking. That is why Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis asked for military support and additional troops on Saturday during a visit by US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.
Austin made no promises about this: he warned that Putin could strike in Ukraine any moment. Although Moscow systematically denies that an invasion is imminent, Putin has Ukraine on three sides. According to US defense sources, half of the more than 190,000 Russian troops have now taken attack positions closer to the Ukrainian border. Austin likens the Russian maneuvers to those of a snake, which “unrolls and positions itself in attack position.”
That is why the US government had advised Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky not to attend the annual Security Conference in Munich. Zelenksi flew back and forth, according to a government spokesman because he expects “concrete agreements on the delivery of additional military and financial support” in Munich. The security conference was almost entirely dominated by tensions with Russia.
Efforts are still being made to avert a military conflict by diplomatic means. NATO head Jens Stoltenberg has offered Moscow talks again about Russia’s security requirements. Russia’s main demands are the withdrawal of NATO troops from Eastern Europe and a commitment that Ukraine will never join NATO. A phone call between French President Emmanuel Macron and Putin is scheduled for this weekend, and US and Russian foreign ministers will meet next week.
Stoltenberg told German broadcaster ARD on Saturday that he expects the Russian army to carry out a “large-scale attack” on Ukraine. “All signs point to it. We all agree that the probability of an attack is very high.’