As Stakes Rise Over Ukraine, U.S. and Russia Pledge to Keep Talking

GENEVA — The United States and Russia agreed on Friday to keep diplomacy alive in their standoff over Ukraine, even as both sides continued to raise the military stakes on the ground.

Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken told his Russian counterpart, Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov, in a hastily scheduled meeting in Geneva that the United States would provide written responses next week to Russia’s demands that the West scale back its military presence in Eastern Europe.

After that, both sides said that the diplomats planned to speak again, and they left the door open to another conversation between President Biden and President Vladimir V. Putin to try to resolve the crisis.

But in and around Ukraine, tensions continued to rise. Russia has been ferrying more troops, armor and advanced antiaircraft systems toward Belarus, a Russian ally and Ukraine’s northern neighbor, putting a growing force within range of the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, for what Russia insisted were merely exercises.

And the United States has authorized Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania to send Stinger anti-aircraft missiles to Ukrainian forces, augmenting the Javelin anti-tank missile deliveries to Ukraine that Britain began this month.

Still, after weeks of heated rhetoric, there were signs that both sides were trying to keep tensions in check and give diplomacy time to play out. Their agreement on Friday to keep negotiating draws out a run of talks that started on Dec. 30 with a phone call between Mr. Putin and Mr. Biden, and continued with a series of three meetings last week that provided no breakthroughs but prevented Russia from portraying the use of force as its only option.

It is unclear who might benefit more from a delay, if Russia remains poised to invade Ukraine — a decision that American officials believe Mr. Putin has not yet made. The U.S. might welcome more time to rally and coordinate allies and plan contingency options. But the Russians may value the appearance of an extended, good-faith diplomatic effort before any potential invasion, and may welcome time to mobilize more troops.

The 90-minute meeting in Geneva on Friday came at the end of a whirlwind trip to Europe for Mr. Blinken, who stopped in Kyiv and Berlin this week.

Mr. Lavrov described Friday’s talks as “a useful, honest discussion,” while Mr. Blinken called them “direct, businesslike” and “not polemical.” Russia has insisted that it expects written responses from the United States to its demands — an apparent attempt to pin American negotiators down on Russia’s top priority, a rollback of NATO’s presence in Ukraine and elsewhere in Eastern Europe.

Russia’s demands include a legally binding halt to NATO’s eastward expansion and a withdrawal of NATO troops from countries like Poland and Baltic nations that used to be aligned with or part of the Soviet Union. The United States has dismissed those demands as nonstarters, even as American officials offered talks on other matters, such as military exercises and the placement of missiles.

“We anticipate that we will be able to share with Russia our concerns and ideas in more detail and in writing next week,” Mr. Blinken said. “We didn’t expect any breakthroughs to happen today, but I believe we are now on a clearer path in terms of understanding each other’s concerns.”

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Biden Strengthens Warning to Russia on Potential Ukraine Attack

President Biden said any movement of Russian forces across Ukraine’s border would be considered an invasion and met with a severe response by the U.S. and its allies. Mr. Biden’s warning came a day after he triggered alarm in Europe by suggesting there was division among allies.

I’ve been absolutely clear with President Putin. He has no misunderstanding — if any, any assembled Russian units move across Ukrainian border that is an invasion. But it would be met with severe and coordinated economic response that I’ve discussed in detail with our allies, as well as laid out very clearly for President Putin. But there is no doubt — let there be no doubt at all — that if Putin makes this choice, Russia will pay a heavy price. It is also not the only scenario we need to be prepared for. Russia has a long history of using measures other than overt military action to carry out aggression and paramilitary tactics, so-called gray zone attacks and actions by Russian soldiers not wearing Russian uniforms. Remember when they moved to the Donbas, the little green men, they were, they were dealing with those who were Russian sympathizers and said that Russia had no nobody in there. Well, that includes little green men in uniforms as well as cyberattack. We have to be ready to respond to these as well and decisive in a united way with a range of tools at our disposal. The Ukrainian foreign minister said this morning that he’s confident of our support and resolve, and he has a right to be.

With tens of thousands of Russian troops massed near the Ukrainian border and President Biden warning that an invasion may be likely, the diplomatic push came amid signs that the United States and Europe lack a fully coordinated plan to deter Moscow. The Kremlin has been sending contradictory signals, leaving the door open to further diplomacy even as Russian troop movements near Ukraine continue.

Mr. Lavrov, addressing the news media separately after the meeting, repeated Russia’s denials that it had any plans to attack Ukraine and said Russia would wait for the United States’ written response next week before deciding on next steps. Mr. Putin has warned that Russia would take unspecified “military-technical” actions to ensure its security if the West did not agree to its demands.

“I can’t say whether or not we are on the right path,” Mr. Lavrov said. “We will understand this when we get the American response on paper to all the points in our proposals.”

The United States has authorized the Baltic states to send Stinger anti-aircraft missiles to Ukrainian forces to bolster defenses should Russia attack, according to two officials from Baltic countries who are familiar with the deal.

Stinger missiles are unlikely to significantly alter the Russian calculus in any military action, according to experts, in part because it is unclear to what extent Russia might rely on airpower over Ukrainian territory.

But their delivery would be a potent symbolic gesture from the United States. The C.I.A. provided the weapons systems to mujahedeen fighters during the Soviet war with Afghanistan in the 1980s, allowing them to shoot down hundreds of planes and helicopters and precipitate the eventual Soviet withdrawal.

It is not yet clear how many missile systems will be delivered or when they might get into the hands of front-line Ukrainian soldiers.

A Lithuanian military official familiar with the Stinger deal said that the delivery was likely to take several weeks at least. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity, because the deal had not been publicly announced.

The Wall Street Journal reported earlier on the U.S. authorization allowing Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia to send the Stingers, as well as Javelin anti-tank missiles, to Ukraine.

Ukraine’s political and military officials have been pleading for additional weaponry and military support amid a continued buildup of Russian forces close to the Ukrainian border. Ukraine’s military intelligence service estimates that 127,000 Russian troops are deployed within attacking distance, including in Ukraine’s northern neighbor, Belarus, where Belarusian and Russian forces will take part in military exercises next month.

Stingers were decisive in Afghanistan because, before their delivery by the C.I.A., mujahedeen fighters had no anti-aircraft defenses to speak of, giving Soviet aircraft near invincibility in the skies. Ukrainian forces have an array of anti-aircraft weaponry, including Soviet-made Igla-2s, which are like Stingers but are less effective, according to military analysts.

While Stingers would pose a threat to Russian aircraft, forcing them to fly higher, their delivery into the hands of Ukrainian soldiers would have only “a limited impact tactically” against any Russian military operation, said Konrad Musyka, an expert on the Russian military and president of Rochan Consulting.

“Strategically, Russia is unlikely to reconsider its actions against Ukraine,” he said.

Robert Lee, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran and Ph.D. candidate at King’s College in London who studies Russian military tactics, said that the weapons would be useful only if Russia were to use airpower over Ukrainian territory and not rely fully on ground-based artillery and rocket forces.

“I’m not sure how much Russia will rely on aviation over Ukrainian airspace given their advantages in ground-based fires,” he said.

President Biden caused controversy in his news conference on Wednesday night by stating the obvious: that the United States’ many European allies are not all in agreement about what to do should President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia choose any number of aggressive options toward Ukraine.

“There are differences in NATO as to what countries are willing to do, depending on what happened, the degree to which they’re able to go,” Mr. Biden said. He also said that a “minor incursion” by Russia into Ukraine could mean “we end up having a fight” with European allies about the appropriate response.

Those comments flustered European leaders with their suggestion of divisions that could further embolden Mr. Putin, and on Thursday Mr. Biden tried to walk them back. He told reporters at the White House that any Russian military move into Ukraine would be met with a “severe and coordinated economic response that I’ve discussed in detail with our allies, as well as laid out very clearly for President Putin.”

In public, top European and NATO officials were quick to play down questions of division. Appearing alongside Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken in Berlin on Thursday, Germany’s foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, said that Europe had an “unequivocal unanimous commitment” to punishing Russian aggression against Ukraine.

The European Union considers that its main strength is in economic sanctions, and those are an active subject of intense and secret discussions, senior European officials say. But some countries are more wary of them than others, and all know that such measures will hurt the European economy far more than the American one. That is especially true given high energy prices and the fact that Europe still gets 40 percent of its natural gas and 25 percent of its oil from Russia.

KYIV, Ukraine — The large buildup of Russian troops near the Ukrainian border is as clear a sign as any that Moscow is considering using military force to achieve its aims if diplomacy fails. But how exactly hostilities might begin has been something of a guessing game, military analysts say.

One possibility came into sharper focus this week when the second-largest political party in Russia’s Parliament, the Communist Party, proposed that Russia recognize two self-declared separatist states in eastern Ukraine, the Donetsk and Luhansk people’s republics.

The Russian-backed separatists have been fighting the Ukrainian government for eight years but without formal recognition from Moscow. If Russia recognized the states, that could create an immediate rationale for Russian military intervention.

The proposal took a twisted path on Friday, however. First, the speaker of Russia’s lower house of Parliament said it was a “serious and responsible” one that ought to be considered. But soon afterward, the Kremlin signaled disapproval for such a move, saying that it was important to avoid any provocative steps at a moment that was “so tense and so sensitive.”

The two separatist states claim far more Ukrainian territory than they now occupy, asserting their borders to be not today’s de facto front line but the administrative borders of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.

So if Russia recognized them, they might invite Russia to base troops in their territory to assist in advancing to their claimed borders. This could cloak a Russian invasion as assistance for new allies.

The Communist Party proposal regarding the states suggested that Russia create “legal, interstate relations governing all aspects of cooperation and mutual assistance, including in questions of security.” It added that recognition of the separatist area would be justified to “support guaranteed security and defense for their people from foreign threats.”

Western diplomats say that Moscow has been striving to settle the eastern Ukraine war in exchange for political concessions from Kyiv, including a rejection of future NATO membership and a role for Russian-aligned political parties and politicians in the national government.

Analysts say that helps explain why Russia has long been reluctant to recognize the states; doing so would take away the leverage it has over Kyiv to accomplish these goals that the more ambiguous conflict has provided.

One is a Harvard-educated amateur guitarist who estimates that he has seen Eric Clapton in concert 75 times. The other is a mercurial, cigar-smoking former ambassador to the United Nations, who writes poetry and has used diplomatic jujitsu to infuriate successive American administrations.

Both Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken and Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov of Russia came to their meeting in Geneva armed with diplomatic skills honed over decades.

Mr. Blinken, who was deputy secretary of state under President Barack Obama, began his career at the State Department during the Clinton administration. Now 59, he has been at Mr. Biden’s side for nearly two decades, including as his top aide on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and later as his national security adviser when he was vice president.

In that role, Mr. Blinken helped develop the American response to political upheaval across the Middle East, with mixed results in Egypt, Iraq, Syria and Libya.

The son of an ambassador to Hungary and the stepson of a Holocaust survivor, Mr. Blinken grew up in New York and in Paris, and graduated from Harvard and Columbia Law School. He speaks eloquent French and initially aspired to be a journalist or film producer.

Mr. Lavrov, 71, has been Russia’s foreign minister for nearly two decades. He sometimes seems to relish destabilizing his diplomatic interlocutors, and his blocking skills helped earn him the nickname “Minister Nyet” among some U.S. counterparts.

He has spent a career trying to counter what the Kremlin has long viewed as reckless American unilateralism. Senior American officials, including Hillary Rodham Clinton and Condoleezza Rice, have said they often found it exasperating to deal with him.

Last month, hours after a Russian official said the Kremlin was satisfied with a phone call between Mr. Biden and Mr. Putin, Mr. Lavrov warned that the Kremlin perceived the United States and its allies as stoking the war in eastern Ukraine. The abrupt change of tone was part of conflicting messages from the Kremlin, sometimes vacillating between hostile and conciliatory.

Mr. Lavrov graduated from the Moscow State Institute of International Relations in 1972 and moved to New York in 1981 to work at the United Nations after brief stints in Sri Lanka and in Moscow. As Russia’s U.N. ambassador for more than a decade, he was known for his elaborate, seemingly absent-minded doodling during lengthy meetings but also for his mastery of briefs.

A speaker of four languages, he can be blunt yet charming. In 2009, Mrs. Clinton, who was then secretary of state, presented Mr. Lavrov with a red plastic button printed with the English word “reset” and the Russian word “peregruzka.” The gift was a play on the Obama administration’s call to “press the reset button” with Moscow.

“We worked hard to get the right Russian word,” Mrs. Clinton said to him. “Do you think we got it?”

“You got it wrong,” he replied, explaining that the Americans had come up with the Russian word for overcharged.

Moves by President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia to mass about 100,000 troops near the borders with Ukraine have prompted urgent diplomacy aimed at staving off a potential new war in Europe. On Wednesday, President Biden said that he expected the Russian leader to send troops over the border, but added: “I think he will pay a serious and dear price for it.”

Here are some key questions surrounding the crisis:

Why is Putin threatening war with Ukraine?

Most diplomats and experts aren’t entirely sure. Even Mr. Putin’s top advisers may not know how seriously he is considering an invasion, a murkiness that allows the Russian leader to declare the confrontation a success in multiple scenarios.

“The expert opinion that I can authoritatively declare is: Who the heck knows?” Fyodor Lukyanov, a Russian foreign-policy analyst who advises the Kremlin, said recently.

Why is the U.S. so alarmed?

A successful invasion would establish Russia as a dominant, expansionist power in Eastern Europe. It would make other democracies (like Taiwan) worry that they could be vulnerable to takeover by nearby authoritarian countries (like China).

What does Putin say his rationale is?

In the collapse of the Soviet Union, Ukraine was arguably the most painful loss for Moscow. It was the most populous former Soviet republic to form its own country apart from Russia. The two now share a 1,200-mile border, and Putin often cites their deep cultural ties.

But Ukraine has drifted toward the West in recent years. The United States and its allies have increased military aid to Ukraine and also said — albeit vaguely — that Ukraine will one day join NATO.

Russia has demanded that NATO pledge never to admit Ukraine and to pull back its troops in Eastern Europe (effectively to where they were in the late 1990s). President Biden said this week that Ukraine was unlikely to join NATO “in the near term,” but ruled out the idea of removing NATO troops from Eastern Europe.

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Listen to ‘The Daily’: Why Ukraine Matters to Vladimir Putin

Amid fears that Moscow is preparing for an invasion, one thing is clear: The Russian president has a singular fixation on the former Soviet republic.

michael barbaro

From The New York Times, I’m Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily.

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Today: Russia is making preparations for what many fear may be a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, prompting warnings from the U.S. of serious consequences if it does. I spoke to my colleague, Moscow bureau chief Anton Troianovski, about what Vladimir Putin wants from Ukraine and just how far he may go to get it.

It’s Wednesday, December 8.

Anton, describe the scene right now on the border between Ukraine and Russia. What does it look like? What exactly is happening there?

anton troianovski

Well, what you’re seeing on the Russian side of the border within 100 to 200 miles away is that thousands of Russian troops are on the move.

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A top military official says intelligence shows nearly 100,000 Russian troops —

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Russian troops have massed on the border of Ukraine.

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— troops on the border with Ukraine. And that’s prompted fears of an invasion early next year.

anton troianovski

We’re seeing a lot of social media footage of tanks and other military equipment on the move, on trains, in some cases, heading west toward the Ukraine border area from as far away as Siberia.

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Tensions between Russia and Ukraine have been building for some time in the wake of —

anton troianovski

These satellite images that we’re seeing show deployment areas around Ukraine that were empty as recently as June that are now full of military equipment-like tanks and armored personnel carriers.

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The U.S. called it unusual activity.

anton troianovski

And obviously, Russia moves its forces all the time. It does big military exercises, snap military exercises all the time, but what we’re being told is that these military movements are very unusual. Some of them are happening at night and, in other ways, seemingly designed to obfuscate where various units are going. And experts are saying we’re also seeing things like logistics and medical equipment being moved around, stuff that you really would see if there were real preparations being made for large-scale military action.

michael barbaro

So what’s happening in Russia is not just the movement of the troops that would perhaps carry out an invasion, but the kind of military personnel and equipment that would be required to deal with the repercussions of something like invading Ukraine?

anton troianovski

Yes. So American intelligence officials are seeing intelligence that shows Russia preparing for a military offensive involving an estimated 175,000 troops —

michael barbaro

Wow.

anton troianovski

— as soon as early next year.

michael barbaro

And Anton, is Ukraine preparing for what certainly looks, from what you just described, as a potential invasion?

anton troianovski

They’re in a really tough spot because no matter how much they prepare, their military would be utterly outgunned and outmatched. Ukraine doesn’t have the missile defense and air defense systems that could prevent a huge shock-and-awe campaign at the beginning of Russian military action.

They also don’t know, if and when an attack comes, which direction it might come from, because Russia could attack from any of three directions. So we’re not seeing a big mobilization in Ukraine right now, but our reporting on the ground there does show a grim and determined mood among the military. The soldiers on the border have made it clear that if it comes to it, they will be prepared to do what they can to make this as costly as possible for the other side.

michael barbaro

So I guess the question everyone has in this moment is why would Putin want to invade Ukraine right now and touch off what would no doubt be a major conflict, one in which, as you just said, Russia would have many advantages, but would nevertheless end up probably being a very deadly conflict?

anton troianovski

So obviously, we don’t yet know whether Putin has made the decision to invade. He’s clearly signaling he’s prepared to use military force. What we do know is that he has been extraordinarily fixated on the issue of Ukraine for years. But I think to really understand it, you have to look at three dates over the last 30 years that really show us why Ukraine matters so much to Putin.

michael barbaro

OK. So what’s the first date?

anton troianovski

The first one, 1991, almost exactly 30 years ago, the Soviet Union breaks up, and Ukraine becomes an independent country. For people of Putin’s generation, this was an incredibly shocking and even traumatic moment. Not only did they see and experience the collapse of an empire, of the country that they grew up in, that they worked in, that, in Putin’s case, the former K.G.B. officer that they served. But there was also a specific trauma of Ukraine breaking away. Ukraine, of all the former Soviet republics, was probably the one most valuable to Moscow.

It was a matter of history and identity with, in many ways, Russian statehood originating out of the medieval Kiev Rus civilization. There’s the matter of culture with so many Russian language writers like Gogol and Bulgakov coming from Ukraine. There was the matter of economics with Ukraine being an industrial and agricultural powerhouse during the Soviet Union, with many of the planes and missiles that the Soviets were most proud of coming from Ukraine.

michael barbaro

So there’s a sense that Ukraine is the cradle of Russian civilization, and to lose it is to lose a part of Russia itself.

anton troianovski

Yeah. And it’s a country of tens of millions of people that is also sandwiched between modern-day Russia and Western Europe. So the other issue is geopolitical, that Ukraine in that sort of Cold War security, East-versus-West mindset, Ukraine was a buffer between Moscow and the West. So 1991 was the year when that all fell apart.

And then by the time that Putin comes to power 10 years later, he’s already clearly thinking about how to reestablish Russian influence in that former Soviet space in Eastern Europe and in Ukraine in particular. We saw a lot of resources go in economically to try to bind Ukraine to Russia, whether it’s discounts on natural gas or other efforts by Russian companies, efforts to build ties to politicians and oligarchs in Ukraine. Really, a multipronged effort by Putin and the Kremlin to really gain as much influence as possible in that former Soviet space that they saw as being so key to Russia’s economic and security interests.

michael barbaro

Got it.

anton troianovski

And then fast forward to the second key date, 2014, which is the year it became clear that that strategy had failed.

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Now, to the growing unrest in Ukraine and the violent clashes between riot police and protesters.

michael barbaro

And why did that strategy fail in 2014?

anton troianovski

That was the year that Ukraine had its — what’s called its Maidan Revolution.

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The situation in Kiev has been very tense.

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Downtown Kiev has been turned into a charred battlefield following two straight nights of rioting.

anton troianovski

It’s a pro-Western revolution —

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They want nothing short of revolution, a new government and a new president.

anton troianovski

— that drove out a Russia-friendly president, that ushered in a pro-Western government, that made it its mission to reduce Ukraine’s ties with Russia and build its ties with the West.

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Ukrainians who want closer ties with the West are once again back in their thousands on Independence Square here in Kiev. They believe they —

michael barbaro

Hmm. And what was Putin’s response to that?

anton troianovski

Well, Putin didn’t even see it as a revolution. He saw it as a coup engineered by the C.I.A. and other Western intelligence agencies meant to drive Ukraine away from Russia. And —

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With stealth and mystery, Vladimir Putin made his move in Ukraine.

anton troianovski

— he used his military.

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At dawn, bands of armed men appeared at the two main airports in Crimea and seized control.

anton troianovski

He sent troops into Crimea, the Ukrainian Peninsula in the Black Sea that’s so dear to people across the former Soviet Union as kind of the warmest, most tropical place in a very cold part of the world.

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Tonight, Russian troops — hundreds, perhaps as many as 2,000, ferried in transport planes — have landed at the airports.

anton troianovski

He fomented a separatist war in Eastern Ukraine that by now has taken more than 10,000 lives and armed and backed pro-Russian separatists in that region. So that was the year 2014 when Russia’s earlier efforts to try to bind Ukraine to Moscow failed and when Russia started taking a much harder line.

michael barbaro

And this feels like a very pivotal moment because it shows Putin’s willingness to deploy the Russian military to strengthen the ties between Russia and Ukraine.

anton troianovski

Absolutely. Strengthened the ties or you can also say his efforts to enforce a Russian sphere of influence by military force. And it’s also the start of what we’ve been seeing ever since, which is Putin making it clear that he is willing to escalate, he is willing to raise the stakes and that he essentially cares more about the fate of Ukraine than the West does.

And that brings us to the third date I wanted to talk about, which is early this year, 2021, when we saw the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, really start taking a more aggressive anti-Russian and pro-Western tack. He cracked down on a pro-Russian oligarch and pro-Russian media. He continued with military exercises with American soldiers and with other Western forces.

He kept talking up the idea of Ukraine joining NATO. That’s the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the Western military alliance. And in a sense, this is what Putin seems to fear the most, the idea of NATO becoming more entrenched in this region. So Putin made it clear that this was starting to cross what he describes as Russia’s red lines and that Russia was willing to take action to stop this.

michael barbaro

So to put this all together and understand why Putin is doing what he’s doing when it comes to Ukraine, we have as a backdrop here this fixation with Ukraine for historic, political, economic and cultural reasons. And what’s new and urgent here for Putin is his belief that Ukraine is on the verge of a major break with Russia and toward the West — in particular, a military alliance, NATO — and that he cannot tolerate. And so that brings us up to now and this very imminent and scary threat of a Russian invasion.

anton troianovski

That’s right, Michael. I spoke to a former advisor of Putin’s recently who described Ukraine as a trauma within a trauma for the Kremlin — so the trauma of the breakup of the Soviet Union plus the trauma of losing Ukraine specifically for all those reasons you mentioned. And the thing is it’s true.

Russia is losing Ukraine. I think objectively, though, you have to say it’s losing Ukraine in large part because of Putin’s policies, because of the aggressive actions he’s taken. And if you look at the polls before 2014, something like 12 percent of Ukrainians wanted to join NATO. Now, it’s more than half.

michael barbaro

Wow.

anton troianovski

So you put all that together, Ukraine is indeed drifting toward the West. It does seem like Putin feels like he’s running out of time to stop this and that he’s willing to escalate, he’s willing to raise the stakes, to keep Ukraine out of the West. And what we’re seeing right now on the border is all that playing out.

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michael barbaro

We’ll be right back.

So Anton, the question right now is will President Putin actually carry out an invasion of Ukraine? And how should we be thinking about that?

anton troianovski

Well, it’s quite perilous, of course, to try to get inside Putin’s head, but here’s the case for invading now. Number one: NATO and the United States have made it clear that they are not going to come to Ukraine’s defense, because Ukraine is not a member of the NATO alliance, and NATO’s mutual defense pact only extends to full-fledged members. And of course, I think, politically, Putin believes that neither in the U.S., nor in Western Europe, is there the will to see soldiers from those countries die fighting for Ukraine.

michael barbaro

Right. And President Biden has just very publicly pulled the United States out of the war in Afghanistan and more or less communicated that unless American national security interests are at play, he will not be dispatching troops anywhere.

anton troianovski

Exactly. So Putin saw that, and he sees that potentially things could change. If the West does have more of a military presence in Ukraine in the future, let alone if Ukraine were to become a member of NATO at some point — it’s not going to happen in the next few years, but perhaps at some point — then attacking Ukraine becomes a much more costly proposition. So it’s a matter of war now could be less costly to Russia than war later.

michael barbaro

Right. The geopolitics of this moment may work in favor of him doing it in a way that it might not in a year or two or three.

anton troianovski

Absolutely. And then there’s a couple of other reasons. There’s the fact that if we look at everything Putin has said and written over the last year, he really seems convinced that the West is pulling Ukraine away from Russia against the will of much of the Ukrainian people. Polling doesn’t really bear that out, but Putin really seems to be convinced of that. And so it seems like he may also be thinking that Ukrainians would welcome Russian forces as liberators from some kind of Western occupation.

And then third, there’s the economy. The West has already threatened severe sanctions against Russia were it to go ahead with military action, but Russia has been essentially sanctions-proofing its economy since at least 2014, which is when it took control of Crimea and was hit by all these sanctions from the U.S. and from the E.U. So Russia’s economy is still tied to the West.

It imports a lot of stuff from the West. But in many key areas, whether it’s technology or energy extraction or agriculture, Russia is becoming more self-sufficient. And it is building ties to other parts of the world — like China, India, et cetera — that could allow it to diversify and have basically an economic base even if an invasion leads to a major crisis in its financial and economic relationship with the West.

michael barbaro

Right. So this is the argument that Putin can live with the costs of the world reacting very negatively to this invasion?

anton troianovski

Exactly.

michael barbaro

OK. And what are the reasons why an invasion of Ukraine might not happen? What would be the case against it, if you were Vladimir Putin?

anton troianovski

Well, I mean, I have to say, talking to analysts, especially here in Russia, people are very skeptical that Putin would go ahead with an invasion. They point out that he is a careful tactician and that he doesn’t like making moves that are irreversible or that could have unpredictable consequences.

So if we even look at the military action he’s taken recently, the annexation of Crimea, there wasn’t a single shot fired in that. That was a very quick special-forces-type operation. What we’re talking about here, an invasion of Ukraine, would be just a massive escalation from anything Putin has done so far. We are talking about the biggest land war in Europe since World War II, most likely. And it would have all kinds of unpredictable consequences.

There’s also the domestic situation to keep in mind. Putin does still have approval ratings above 60 percent, but things are a bit shaky here, especially with Covid. And some analysts say that Putin wouldn’t want to usher in the kind of domestic unpredictability that could start with a major war with young men coming back in body bags.

And then finally, looking at Putin’s strategy and everything that he’s said, for all we know, he doesn’t really want to annex Ukraine. He wants influence over Ukraine. And the way he thinks he can do that is through negotiations with the United States.

And that’s where the last key point here comes in, which is Putin’s real conviction that it’s the U.S. pulling the strings here and that he can accomplish his goals by getting President Biden to sit down with him and hammering out a deal about the structure of security in Eastern Europe.

So in that sense, this whole troop build-up might not be about an impending invasion at all. It might just be about coercive diplomacy, getting the U.S. to the table, and getting them to hammer out an agreement that would somehow pledge to keep Ukraine out of NATO and pledge to keep Western military infrastructure out of Ukraine and parts of the Black Sea.

michael barbaro

Well in that sense, Anton, Putin may be getting what he wants, right? Because as we speak, President Putin and President Biden have just wrapped up a very closely watched phone call about all of this. So is it possible that that call produces a breakthrough and perhaps a breakthrough that goes Putin’s way?

anton troianovski

Well, that’s very hard to imagine. And that’s really what makes this situation so volatile and so dangerous, which is that what Putin wants, the West and President Biden can’t really give.

michael barbaro

Why not?

anton troianovski

Well, for instance, pledging to keep Ukraine out of NATO would violate the Western concept that every country should have the right to decide for itself what its alliances are. President Biden obviously has spent years, going back to when he was vice president, really speaking in favor of Ukrainian sovereignty and self-determination and trying to help Ukraine take a more Western path. So Biden suddenly turning on all of that and giving Putin what he wants here is hard to imagine.

michael barbaro

Right, because that would create a very slippery slope when it comes to any country that Russia wants to have influence over. It would then know that the right playbook would be to mass troops on the border and wait for negotiation with the U.S. and hope that the U.S. would basically sell those countries out. That’s probably not something you’re saying that President Biden would willingly do.

anton troianovski

Right. And then, of course, the other question is, well, if Russia doesn’t get what it wants, if Putin doesn’t get what he wants, then what does he do?

michael barbaro

So Anton, it’s tempting to think that this could all be what you just described as a coercive diplomatic bluff by Putin to extract what he wants from President Biden and from the West. But it feels like history has taught us that Putin is willing to invade Ukraine. He did it in 2014.

History has also taught us that he’s obsessed with Ukraine, dating back to 1991 and the end of the Soviet Union. And it feels like one of the ultimate lessons of history is that we have to judge leaders based on their actions. And his actions right now are putting 175,000 troops near the border with Ukraine. And so shouldn’t we conclude that it very much looks like Putin might carry out this invasion?

anton troianovski

Yes, that’s right. And of course, there are steps that Putin could take that would be short of a full-fledged invasion that could still be really destabilizing and damaging. Here in Moscow, I’ve heard analysts speculate about maybe pinpoint airstrikes against the Ukrainian targets, or a limited invasion perhaps just specifically in that area where Russian-backed separatists are fighting.

But even such steps could have really grave consequences. And that’s why if you combine what we’re seeing on the ground in Russia, near the border, and what we’ve been hearing from President Putin and other officials here in Moscow, that all tells us that the stakes here are really high.

michael barbaro

Well, Anton, thank you very much. We appreciate your time.

anton troianovski

Thanks for having me.

michael barbaro

On Tuesday afternoon, both the White House and the Kremlin released details about the call between Putin and Biden. The White House said that Biden warned Putin of severe economic sanctions if Russia invaded Ukraine. The Kremlin said that Putin repeated his demands that Ukraine not be allowed to join NATO and that Western weapons systems not be placed inside Ukraine. But Putin made no promises to remove Russian forces from the border.

[music]

We’ll be right back.

Here’s what else you need to know today. On Tuesday night, top Democrats and Republicans said they had reached a deal to raise the country’s debt ceiling and avert the U.S. defaulting on its debt for the first time. The deal relies on a complicated one-time legislative maneuver that allows Democrats in the Senate to raise the debt ceiling without support from Republicans, since Republicans oppose raising the debt ceiling under President Biden. Without congressional action, the Treasury Department says it can no longer pay its bills after December 15.

Today’s episode was produced by Eric Krupke, Rachelle Bonja and Luke Vander Ploeg. It was edited by Michael Benoist, contains original music by Dan Powell and Marion Lozano, and was engineered by Chris Wood. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly.

That’s it for The Daily. I’m Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.

What isn’t Putin saying?

Some observers believe that the troop buildup is a mixture of bluff and distraction, arguing that a full-scale invasion of Ukraine could be bloody and expensive, potentially damaging Russia’s economy and Putin’s political standing.

So far, Putin does not appear to be preparing Russians to go to war. Russia’s deputy foreign minister continued this pattern, saying on Wednesday, “We will not attack, strike, invade, quote unquote, whatever, Ukraine.”

But by making an invasion seem possible, experts argue that Putin can try to win other concessions, such as a freer hand in Eastern Europe.

So the risk of war is low?

Not necessarily. Even skeptics acknowledge that it is possible, given the lack of transparency about Mr. Putin’s thinking.

A few analysts, like Melinda Haring of the Atlantic Council, believe that war is likely: Putin has lost patience with Ukraine, she has written, and believes the United States would not go to war over it. President Biden said this week that a “minor incursion” would not necessarily pull the United States into the fight.

KYIV, Ukraine — Russian troops haven’t fired a single shot, but the threat of a Russian invasion has been rattling Ukraine’s economy, which is already damaged by the pandemic.

The Ukrainian national currency, the hryvnia, has lost about 5 percent of its value since December compared with the dollar, and rates the government pays to borrow money have more than doubled. President Volodymyr Zelensky appealed for calm in an address to Ukrainians on Wednesday, advising the public not to panic about potential conflict and not to rush to withdraw cash from their bank accounts.

“Russia is betting Ukraine will not cope, not economically and not militarily,” Pavlo Klimkin, a former Ukrainian foreign minister, said in an interview.

But the military buildup is also harming Russia’s economy, fueling investor worries about Western sanctions should Moscow invade. The main ruble-denominated stock index, MOEX, dropped about 8 percent on Tuesday, in its sharpest decline since the global financial instability at the onset of the pandemic in March 2020.

Ukraine is now effectively priced out of commercial lending markets and is likely to have to seek a bailout from Western allies, Mr. Klimkin said. The country’s stocks of natural gas are also insufficient to last through the winter, which means the national energy company, Naftogaz, could soon be forced to buy fuel at sky-high prices on the European spot market.

“The West should help, because this is a challenge as much for Ukraine as for the West and NATO,” Mr. Klimkin said.

With investors unsure that a government will be around long to repay them, the rates they are demanding on Ukrainian state bonds have soared. The rate on one short-term Ukrainian government bond due in September rose earlier this week to over 26 percent, before settling in subsequent days.

Ukrainian Eurobonds, a type of government bond, tumbled a week ago after talks between the United States, NATO and Russia intended to forestall a Russian invasion ended inconclusively.

Rates that Ukrainian companies pay to borrow for investments are also rising, discouraging business activity and harming the country’s longer-term economic prospects.

At a nearly two-hour news conference on Wednesday, President Biden said that he now expected President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia to order an invasion of Ukraine. It was a grim assessment that the diplomacy and threat of sanctions issued by the United States and its European allies were unlikely to stop the Russian leader from sending troops across the border.

“Do I think he’ll test the West, test the United States and NATO, as significantly as he can? Yes, I think he will,” Mr. Biden told reporters in the East Room of the White House. He added, almost with an air of fatalism: “But I think he will pay a serious and dear price for it that he doesn’t think now will cost him what it’s going to cost him. And I think he will regret having done it.”

Asked to clarify whether he was accepting that an invasion was coming, Mr. Biden said: “My guess is he will move in. He has to do something.”

Mr. Biden’s comment went well beyond the current intelligence assessments described by White House officials, which conclude that Mr. Putin has not made a decision about whether to invade. It also provoked concern in Ukraine and among NATO allies, because Mr. Biden acknowledged that if Mr. Putin conducted only a partial invasion, NATO nations could be split on how strongly to react.

A buildup of Russian forces near the border with Ukraine has raised concerns among Western and Ukrainian officials that the Kremlin might be preparing for significant military action, possibly an invasion.

This map, compiled by The New York Times, shows troops, tanks and heavy artillery moving into positions that threaten to widen the conflict in Ukraine’s east as well as potentially open a new front on Ukraine’s northern border, closer to the capital, Kyiv.

Russia currently has about 100,000 troops on the Ukraine border, according to Ukrainian and Western officials. U.S. intelligence agencies have assessed that the Kremlin has drawn up plans for a military operation involving up to 175,000 troops that could begin in the coming weeks.

While it is not clear whether President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has decided to launch an attack, analysts say the country is well on its way toward constructing the architecture needed for a significant military intervention in Ukraine.

The maps represent a snapshot of Russian positions, as well as broad estimates of the number of troops and kinds of equipment deployed within striking distance of Ukraine. It is based on information obtained by Ukrainian and Western officials as well as independent military analysts and satellite imagery.