Russia Flexes Military for Ukraine Move; West to Respond

Russia set the stage for a quick move to secure its hold on Ukraine's rebel regions on Tuesday with new legislation that would allow the deployment of troops there as the West prepares to announce sanctions against Moscow amid fears of a full-scale invasion.

The new Russia bills, which are likely to be quickly rubber-stamped by the Kremlin-controlled parliament, came a day after President Vladimir Putin recognized the independence of the regions in eastern Ukraine. The legislation could be a pretext for a deeper move into Ukrainian territory as the US and its allies have feared.

Quickly after Putin signed the decree late Monday, convoys of armored vehicles were seen rolling across the separatist-controlled territories. It wasn’t immediately clear if they were Russian.

Russian officials haven't yet acknowledged any troop deployments to the rebel east, but Vladislav Brig, a member of the separatist local council in Donetsk, told reporters that the Russian troops already had moved in, taking up positions in the region's north and west.

Putin’s decision to recognize the rebel regions as independent states follows a nearly eight-year old separatist conflict that has killed more than 14,000 and devastated Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland called Donbas. The latest developments and move by Putin were met with reprehension by many countries around the world.

Ever since the conflict erupted weeks after Russia’s 2014 annexation of the Ukrainian Crimean Peninsula, Ukraine and its Western allies have accused Moscow of backing the separatists with troops and weapons, the charges it has denied, saying that Russians who fought in the east were volunteers. Putin’s move Monday formalizes Russia’s hold on the regions and gives it a free hand to deploy its forces there.

Draft bills that are set quickly sail through both houses of Russian parliament Tuesday, envisage military ties, including possible deployment of Russian military bases in the separatist regions.

Several senior lawmakers suggested Tuesday that Russia could recognize the rebel-held territories in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Ukraine in their original administrative borders, including the chunks of land currently under the Ukrainian control.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy sought to project calm, telling the country in an address overnight: “We are not afraid of anyone or anything. We don’t owe anyone anything. And we won’t give anything to anyone.” His foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, would be in Washington on Tuesday to meet with Secretary of State Antony Blinken, the State Department said.

“The Kremlin recognized its own aggression against Ukraine,” Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov said on Twitter, describing Moscow’s move as a “New Berlin Wall” and urging the West to quickly slap Russia with sanctions.

The White House responded quickly, issuing an executive order to prohibit US investment and trade in the separatist regions, and additional measures — likely sanctions — were to be announced Tuesday. Those sanctions are independent of what Washington has prepared in the event of a Russian invasion, according to a senior administration official who briefed reporters on the condition of anonymity.

Other Western allies also said they were planning to announce sanctions.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said Tuesday the UK will also introduce “immediate” economic sanctions against Russia, and warned that Putin is bent on “a full-scale invasion of Ukraine ... that would be absolutely catastrophic."

Johnson said Putin had “completely torn up international law” and British sanctions would target not just the regions of Donetsk and Luhansk but “Russian economic interests as hard as we can.”

EU foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, said that “Russian troops have entered in Donbas,” adding that “I wouldn’t say that (it is) a fully-fledged invasion, but Russian troops are on Ukrainian soil” and the EU would decide on sanctions later on Tuesday.

Polish Defense Minister Mariusz Błaszczak also said in a radio interview Tuesday he could confirm that Russian forces entered the territories, describing it as a violation of Ukraine’s borders and international law.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin on Tuesday said China would “continue to stay in engagement with all parties,” continuing to steer clear from committing to back Russia despite the close ties between Moscow and Beijing.

While Ukraine and the West said the Russian recognition of the rebel regions shatters a 2015 peace deal, Russia's ambassador to the United Nations, Vassily Nebenzia, challenged that, noting that Moscow isn't a party to the Minsk agreement and arguing that it could still be implemented if Ukraine chooses so.

The 2015 deal that was brokered by France and Germany and signed in Minsk, the Belarusian capital, required Ukraine to offer a sweeping self-rule to the rebel regions in a diplomatic coup for Russia after a series of Ukrainian military defeats.

Many in Ukraine resented the deal as a betrayal of national interests and a blow to the country's integrity, and its implementation has stalled.

Putin announced the move in an hourlong televised speech, blaming the US and its allies for the current crisis and describing Ukraine's bid to join NATO as an existential challenge to Russia.

“Ukraine’s membership in NATO poses a direct threat to Russia’s security,” he said.

Russia says it wants Western guarantees that NATO won’t allow Ukraine and other former Soviet countries to join as members — and Putin said Monday that a simple moratorium on Ukraine’s accession wouldn’t be enough. Moscow has also demanded the alliance halt weapons deployments to Ukraine and roll back its forces from Eastern Europe — demands flatly rejected by the West.

Putin warned Monday that the Western rejection of Moscow's demands gives Russia the right to take other steps to protect its security.

Sweeping through more than a century of history, Putin painted today’s Ukraine as a modern construct used by the West to contain Russia despite the neighbors inextricable links.

In a stark warning to Ukraine, the Russian leader charged that it has unfairly inherited Russia's historic land granted to it by the Communist rulers of the Soviet Union and mocked its effort to shed the Communist past in a so-called “decommunization” campaign.

“We are ready to show you what the real decommunization would mean for Ukraine,” Putin added ominously in an apparent signal of his readiness to raise new land claims.

With an estimated 150,000 Russian troops massed on three sides of Ukraine, the US has warned that Moscow has already decided to invade. Still, President Joe Biden and Putin tentatively agreed to a meeting brokered by French President Emmanuel Macron in a last-ditch effort to avoid war.

Macron’s office said Biden and Putin had “accepted the principle of such a summit,” to be followed by a broader meeting that would include other “relevant stakeholders to discuss security and strategic stability in Europe.”

If Russia moves in, the meeting will be off, but the prospect of a face-to-face summit resuscitated hopes in diplomacy to prevent a conflict that could devastate Ukraine and cause huge economic damage across Europe, which is heavily dependent on Russian energy.

Tensions have continued to fly high in eastern Ukraine, with more shelling reported along the tense line of contact between the rebels and Ukrainian forces. Ukraine's military said two Ukrainian soldiers were killed and another 12 were wounded by shelling over the last 24 hours. It has rejected the rebel claims of shelling residential areas and insisted that Ukrainian forces weren’t returning fire.

Two US Navy pilots were shot down Sunday over the Red Sea in an apparent “friendly fire” incident, the US military said, marking the most serious incident to threaten troops in over a year of America targeting Yemen's Houthi militias.

Both pilots were recovered alive after ejecting from their stricken aircraft, with one suffering minor injuries. But the shootdown underlines just how dangerous the Red Sea corridor has become over the ongoing attacks on shipping by the Iranian-backed Houthis despite US and European military coalitions patrolling the area.

The US military had conducted airstrikes targeting the Houthis at the time, though the US military’s Central Command did not elaborate on what their mission was and did not immediately respond to questions from The Associated Press.

The F/A-18 shot down had just flown off the deck of the USS Harry S. Truman aircraft carrier, Central Command said. On Dec. 15, Central Command acknowledged the Truman had entered the Mideast, but hadn't specified that the carrier and its battle group was in the Red Sea.

“The guided missile cruiser USS Gettysburg, which is part of the USS Harry S. Truman Carrier Strike Group, mistakenly fired on and hit the F/A-18,” Central Command said in a statement.

From the military's description, the aircraft shot down was a two-seat F/A-18 Super Hornet fighter jet assigned to the “Red Rippers” of Strike Fighter Squadron 11 out of Naval Air Station Oceana, Virginia.

It wasn't immediately clear how the Gettysburg could mistake an F/A-18 for an enemy aircraft or missile, particularly as ships in a battle group remain linked by both radar and radio communication.

However, Central Command said that warships and aircraft earlier shot down multiple Houthi drones and an anti-ship cruise missile launched by the militias. Incoming hostile fire from the Houthis has given sailors just seconds to make decisions in the past.

Since the Truman's arrival, the US has stepped up its airstrikes targeting the Houthis and their missile fire into the Red Sea and the surrounding area. However, the presence of an American warship group may spark renewed attacks from the militias, like what the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower saw earlier this year. That deployment marked what the Navy described as its most intense combat since World War II.

On Saturday night and early Sunday, US warplanes conducted airstrikes that shook Sanaa, the capital of Yemen that the Houthis have held since 2014. Central Command described the strikes as targeting a “missile storage facility” and a “command-and-control facility,” without elaborating.

Houthi-controlled media reported strikes in both Sanaa and around the port city of Hodeidah, without offering any casualty or damage information. In Sanaa, strikes appeared particularly targeted at a mountainside known to be home to military installations. The Houthis later acknowledged the aircraft being shot down in the Red Sea.

The Houthis have targeted about 100 merchant vessels with missiles and drones since the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip started in October 2023 after Hamas’ surprise attack on Israel that killed 1,200 people and saw 250 others taken hostage.

Israel’s grinding offensive in Gaza has killed more than 45,000 Palestinians, local health officials say. The tally doesn’t distinguish between combatants and civilians.

The Houthis have seized one vessel and sunk two in a campaign that has also killed four sailors. Other missiles and drones have either been intercepted by separate US- and European-led coalitions in the Red Sea or failed to reach their targets, which have also included Western military vessels.

The militias maintain that they target ships linked to Israel, the US or the United Kingdom to force an end to Israel’s campaign against Hamas in Gaza. However, many of the ships attacked have little or no connection to the conflict, including some bound for Iran.

The Houthis also have increasingly targeted Israel itself with drones and missiles, resulting in retaliatory Israeli airstrikes.

Russia Flexes Military for Ukraine Move; West to Respond