(CN) — With United States intelligence sources and top officials claiming Russia may invade Ukraine on Wednesday or before the Winter Olympics end on Sunday, tensions soared even higher on Tuesday as Ukrainian websites were allegedly hit by a powerful cyberattack and Russia's parliament voted to recognize Russia-backed breakaway regions in eastern Ukraine.
On Tuesday afternoon, Ukrainian media reported that government websites were coming under attack and people were unable to access banks accounts from at least two Ukrainian banks. The attack was blamed on Russia, which has amassed about 130,000 troops around Ukraine and engaged them in provocative large-scale live-fire military drills.
In Moscow, meanwhile, the State Duma took the aggressive step to recognize as independent the self-declared Russian-backed Donetsk People's Republic and the Luhansk People's Republic in eastern Ukraine's Donbas region. About 14,000 people have been killed in this eight-year frozen conflict and up to 2 million people displaced. The vote was condemned by Western powers and Ukraine as undermining ceasefire talks.
U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin was en route to Europe and the Pentagon depicted a scenario where Russian fighter jets could bomb Ukraine and blaze a path for a ground invasion. U.S. President Joe Biden was expected to talk Tuesday night about the situation.
In Kyiv, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, a former television comedian voted into office in 2019 on pledges of bringing peace between his country and Russia but whose record has been the opposite, declared Wednesday a “Day of Unity” and called on Ukrainians to rally behind the flag.
However, in Ukraine the majority of the population is reportedly not worried about a potential invasion and have repeatedly told media outlets that they don't believe an invasion is imminent. There are, nonetheless, reports saying gun sales are ticking up and that more Ukrainians are stepping up to volunteer to fight.
Still, media in Kyiv report that most people are going about their lives as normally as they can in a nation that has been among the worst hit by the coronavirus pandemic with more than 103,000 confirmed Covid-19 deaths in a country with a population of about 44 million. Ukraine has struggled to contain the pandemic and politics too played a part with its anti-Russian government rejecting the Russian-made Sputnik vaccine and finding it hard to get enough Western-made vaccines.
With fears over a potential war soaring, Social Democratic German Chancellor Olaf Scholz made his inaugural trip to Moscow on Tuesday and became the latest European leader to sit down with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin in a bid to de-escalate the crisis. Scholz visited Kyiv the day before.
Despite Western accusations that Russia is about to invade, there are signs that diplomatic efforts will prevail and that Putin sees no clear advantages to a bloody invasion of Ukraine that could lead to a drawn-out guerrilla war and leave his country further ostracized by Western sanctions and potentially even excluded from the international banking system.
The Kremlin has called the invasion claims “hysteria” but has warned the U.S. that seeking to make Ukraine a NATO member is a “red line” it cannot tolerate for its own security reasons. On Tuesday, Putin once again accused the West of undermining Russia's security by moving NATO ever closer to Russia since the end of the Cold War.
“Russia cannot turn a blind eye on how the United States and the North Atlantic Alliance are interpreting, quite freely and for their own benefit, the key principles of equal and indivisible security, which are committed to paper in many European documents,” he said at a joint news conference with Scholz, according to Tass, a Russian news agency.
Putin and Scholz said they want to find a diplomatic solution and keep the peace in Europe. Germany is Russia's largest trading partner and Russia provides Germany, Europe's economic powerhouse, with much of its energy needs.
“We do not want war in Europe,” Putin said, according to Deutsche Welle, a German broadcaster. “We are ready to work further together. We are ready to go down the negotiations track.”
Scholz said it “is our absolute duty as heads of government that Europe does not see an escalation into war.”
U.S. officials have warned of a potential invasion since November and took the drastic step on Monday to move its Kyiv embassy to the western Ukrainian city of Lviv. Other countries, including Russia's ally China, also have removed diplomatic staff in Kyiv and many of Ukraine's richest individuals, so-called oligarchs, have fled too amidst the emergency, drawing the ire of Zelenskyy, who's criticized the White House for causing panic and damaging Ukraine's economy. Airlines too have suspended flights to Ukraine and the country's weak economy has seen its currency, the hryvnia, plummet in recent weeks.
On Monday, the U.S. offered a new $1 billion loan to Ukraine, the latest effort to prop up Kyiv since the country was thrown into conflict with Russia following the overthrow of pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovich in the so-called “Maidan Revolution.” Those bloody events in Kyiv led to Russia's annexation of Crimea and the eruption of the Donbas war.
Since then, the U.S. has provided Kyiv with three separate $1 billion sovereign loan guarantees and funneled about $6 billion to help build up Ukraine's military and economy, the State Department said.
Faced with the prospect of seeing their country crippled economically and politically for years to come by the Kremlin's overwhelming pressure and interference, there are signs Ukraine's leadership may be contemplating ways to calm the crisis.
On Monday, Ukraine's ambassador to the United Kingdom, Vasim Prystaiko, told a BBC radio host that Ukraine might consider removing from its constitution wording that directs the country to seek NATO membership. That language was added in 2019.
“In order to avoid war right now, we are ready for compromises,” Prystaiko said. “We could. We are flexible. We are trying to find the best way to solve the problem. If we have to make serious concessions, we can do it.”
Kyiv later partially walked back the ambassador's words, but there are indications that Zelenskyy is coming under pressure to return to peace talks with Russia over how to settle the Donbas war and allow pro-Russian parts of eastern Ukraine more autonomy from Kyiv. Ukraine's conflict is defined by Europhile Ukrainians in the West and Russophile Ukrainians in the East.
French President Emmanuel Macron traveled last week to Moscow and Kyiv in a bid to revive efforts to carry out ceasefire deals signed in 2014 and 2015, known as the Minsk Agreements. The deals involve prison exchanges, amnesties, the possibility of more regional autonomy and the removal of weaponry, but both sides accuse the other of breaching the compromise.
Moscow said removing the NATO clause from the Ukrainian constitution would help ease tensions.
“Ukraine's recorded refusal to join NATO would help formulate a meaningful response to Russia's security concerns,” Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, according to Strana.ua, a pro-Russian online newspaper.
Courthouse News reporter Cain Burdeau is based in the European Union.
Follow @cainburdeau
Subscribe to Closing Arguments
Sign up for new weekly newsletter Closing Arguments to get the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and hot cases and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world.
