US says Russia has added 7,000 troops to the Ukrainian border

A bipartisan resolution condemning Russia’s aggression and actions towards Ukraine could get a vote on the Senate floor as soon as Thursday, according to Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine, a member of both the Senate Armed Services and Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

“You could see there being a consensus,” Kaine said.

The resolution is being offered after talks about a bipartisan sanctions bill halted when Republican Sen. Jim Risch, ranking member of the Foreign Relations Committee, introduced a Republican-only Russia sanctions bill on Tuesday.

Now there is an effort among bipartisan senators to come to an agreement on some language condemning Russia’s actions against Ukraine to show broad support among Democrats and Republicans for Ukraine while tensions remain extremely high between the two countries. The main proposal being floated is a joint resolution led by Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen and Republican Sen. Rob Portman, but Risch said several proposals are being floated. 

Risch said there was a “legitimate disagreement” on the extent of sanctions proposed by Democrats and Republicans. 

“I suspect and I predict that if there’s an invasion,” of Russia into Ukraine, “my bill is going to become very, very popular,” Risch said, referring to the Russian sanctions bill he introduced on Tuesday.

More context: A group of senators are traveling to Germany on Thursday for the Munich Security Conference, where several world leaders, including Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Vice President Kamala Harris, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and other heads of state and ministers, will be in attendance.

Kaine believes senators traveling to the conference want to show some kind of support for Ukraine before heading overseas, which is why it’s possible the resolution could come tomorrow.

“We’ve got a bunch of colleagues going to Munich, and I suspect that they would like to have something,” Kaine said.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Moscow will send its response to the US on security guarantees on Thursday, following a meeting with his counterpart Luigi Di Maio in Moscow.

Lavrov said Moscow will also make the letter public.

“Now we are finalizing our analysis on the American letter, and we hope in the nearest future you will find out how the situation unfolds. At the very least, we will send our reply back to the US today,” Lavrov said.

This comes weeks after the US gave Moscow its written response aimed at deterring a Russian invasion of Ukraine. The written document was intended to address concerns Moscow has publicly released and to outline areas where the US has said it sees potential for progress with Russia — arms control, transparency and stability, the top US diplomat told reporters at the State Department at the end of January.

This post has been updated.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is a man who likes to keep his options open, and the Ukraine crisis is no exception: As the Kremlin leader signals his willingness to engage on the diplomatic front, he is also bolstering a case for war.

“According to our estimates, what is happening in the Donbas today is genocide,” Putin said.

Scholz pushed back, later telling reporters that Putin was “wrong” to use the term. But those comments were already out in the public realm — and Putin had stepped up the rhetoric.

Putin’s grievance in the Donbas isn’t new. He has spoken repeatedly about what he describes as the violation of the rights of ethnic Russians and Russian speakers in Ukraine, and has stated that it is within Russia’s rights to intervene militarily to protect them.

But Putin appears to be making a case for his own version of a “responsibility to protect,” however distant the situation in Donbas may be from a Rwanda — where over 800,000 people, mostly Tutsis, were killed over the course of 100 days in 1994 — or Srebrenica — where more than 7,000 mostly Muslim men and boys were slaughtered in 1995.

The Investigative Committee, Russia’s top law enforcement body, took Putin’s comments a step further on Wednesday when it announced it had opened a criminal investigation into alleged evidence of what it called “indiscriminate shelling” of civilians in the Donbas region by Ukrainian forces since 2014.

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The number of Russian troops massed along Ukraine’s borders has increased by approximately 7,000 in recent days, the United States alleged Wednesday evening, despite claims from Moscow it was pulling back.

The US claim came as a senior Biden administration official said the increase proved that Russia’s assertion of withdrawal was “false,” and suggests that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s apparent warming to the notion of diplomacy is merely a guise.

Wednesday’s new numbers would mean the totality of Russian forces at the border now exceeds the 150,000 figure President Joe Biden shared on Tuesday.

In a speech from the East Room, Biden allowed that a Russian troop withdrawal would be “good,” but quickly noted he’d seen no evidence to suggest such a pullback was indeed underway.

“Our analysts indicate that they remain very much in a threatening position,” Biden said. “And the fact remains right now Russia has more than 150,000 troops encircling Ukraine and Belarus and along Ukraine’s border.”

Earlier in the week, Putin claimed that Russia was sending some troops back to base after the completion of training drills in Crimea, the Ukrainian territory annexed by Russia in 2014.

Leaders from Europe and the US, however, expressed doubt about the claim.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said Wednesday that the alliance had not yet seen “any sign of de-escalation on the ground,” adding that “signs from Moscow” that diplomacy should continue were grounds for cautious optimism.

US Secretary Antony Blinken concurred, saying that there is “a difference between what Russia says and what it does.”

“What we’re seeing is no meaningful pullback,” Blinken added.

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