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Updates: President Biden’s warning of a Russian invasion was prompted by new U.S. intelligence.

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President Joe Biden delivers remarks on Ukraine on Friday. On Sunday, the White House signaled a direct meeting with Russian president Vladimir V. Putin may be on the table, if Russia agrees to not invade Ukraine.
Credit…Sarahbeth Maney/The New York Times

A day of last-minute diplomacy by French President Emmanuel Macron on Sunday appeared to give some new hope for a peaceful resolution over Ukraine as White House officials said President Biden would be willing to consider direct talks with his Russian counterpart as long as Russia does not invade.

White House officials said a possible summit between Mr. Biden and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia would only be held after meetings between the foreign ministers of the two countries, which are tentatively scheduled for later this week.

One senior White House official said there were no plans for either the format or timing of a meeting between the two leaders. Another official called it all completely notional, and said that all evidence suggests Russia still intends to invade Ukraine in the coming days. Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

But the possibility of another diplomatic overture, which came after Mr. Macron spoke by telephone Sunday morning with Mr. Putin and later called Mr. Biden, was an indication that Mr. Biden and America’s European allies had not yet given up on convincing Mr. Putin that the costs of an invasion were too high.

In a statement from the White House, Jen Psaki, the press secretary, said that Mr. Biden had accepted the idea of talks with Mr. Putin “in principle” and said that the United States remains committed to pursuing diplomacy “until the moment an invasion begins.”

“We are also ready to impose swift and severe consequences should Russia instead choose war,” she wrote in the statement. “And currently, Russia appears to be continuing preparations for a full-scale assault on Ukraine very soon.”

Mr. Macron’s outreach to Russia began with the Sunday morning telephone call with Mr. Putin, during which the two leaders agreed on “the need to prioritize a diplomatic solution to the current crisis” and to secure a cease-fire in eastern Ukraine in the coming hours, according to a statement from Mr. Macron’s office.

The statement added that, “if the conditions are met,” a diplomatic path should allow for “a meeting at the highest level in order to define a new peace and security order in Europe.”

Mr. Macron later talked to Mr. Biden by telephone.

A second statement from Mr. Macron’s office said that the French president had proposed a summit between Mr. Biden and Mr. Putin “and then with relevant stakeholders to discuss security and strategic stability in Europe.”

But by late Sunday night, it remained unclear just how significant the new efforts to avert a major war in Europe had been.

The Kremlin signaled little optimism for diplomacy. In a statement published after the call between Mr. Putin and Mr. Macron, it said the Russian leader repeated his contention that Western countries were pushing Ukraine’s government to a “military solution” of its conflict with Russian-backed separatists in the east.

The Ukrainian government in Kyiv insists that it has no plans to launch an offensive against the separatist territories, but separatist leaders over the weekend began an “evacuation” of women and children, claiming that such an offensive was imminent.

And White House officials continued to stress Sunday night that they continued to see stark evidence that Mr. Putin was moving forward with plans to invade Ukraine soon. Officials confirmed Sunday that the United States had intelligence last week showing the Kremlin had given the order for Russian military units to proceed with an invasion.

Several administration officials on Sunday played down the reports of a possible summit, saying that Mr. Putin has a history of agreeing to talks even as he prepares for — and ultimately engages in — armed conflict.

They noted that Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken and Sergey V. Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, are scheduled to meet next week, but that the United States will call that meeting off, too, if Russian troops cross the border into Ukraine.

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Credit…Tyler Hicks/The New York Times

U.S. intelligence learned last week that the Kremlin had given the order for Russian military units to proceed with an invasion of Ukraine, information that prompted President Biden to announce that President Vladimir V. Putin had made the decision to attack, U.S. officials said.

Officials declined to describe the intelligence in any detail, anxious to keep secret their method of collecting the information. But intelligence officials have told the administration they have a high level of confidence in the intelligence they have collected in recent months about Russian military planning, as well as about plots by Moscow’s intelligence agencies to try and create a pretext for war.

The administration’s trust in the intelligence has only grown as the world watched the Russian military take steps that American spy agencies had predicted.

“Everything leading up to the actual invasion appears to be taking place,’’ Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said on Sunday, appearing on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “All of these false-flag operations, all these provocations to create justifications — all that is already in train.”

Still, an official cautioned that the Kremlin has developed multiple war scenarios, and it is not clear yet exactly how an attack on Ukraine might play out, including how quickly, for example, Russian forces might move on Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine.

On Friday, Mr. Biden intensified his warning, saying he was “convinced” that Mr. Putin had made the decision to invade and that an attack could commence in the coming days. “We have a significant intelligence capability,” Mr. Biden said.

Mr. Biden’s declaration, and the new description of what he based it on, are the latest salvos in a campaign by the administration to use declassified intelligence to expose and disrupt the Kremlin’s plans, perhaps slowing an invasion and buying more time for diplomacy.

But American military and intelligence assets have confirmed that they have observed the Russian military take steps to execute an attack plan.

The new intelligence reveals that 40 to 50 percent of the more than 150,000 Russian forces surrounding Ukraine have moved out of staging and into combat formation and could launch a full-scale invasion within days, U.S. officials said Friday. Some of the forces are Russian reservists who would make up an occupation force after an invasion, officials said.

While officials said the early stages of an attack are playing out now, with stepped-up shelling and accusations of Ukrainian provocations, the exact steps the Russian military will take next are not clear. Until Russian tanks roll across the border, Mr. Putin could change his mind and order his military to stand back.

Despite the intelligence showing Mr. Putin has made the decision to attack, senior administration officials said that the window for diplomacy still had not closed and that the Russian leader could still pause his invasion plan.

A senior defense official said the outlook is very gloomy, with combat forces at the ready and Russian reservists gathering near the border.

“Russia has been building up its military forces in and around Ukraine, including in Belarus,” Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III said Friday in Warsaw. “They are uncoiling and now poised to strike.”

Information about the intelligence was earlier reported by CBS News and The Washington Post.

On Sunday, Russia extended their military exercises in Belarus, a move European intelligence officials had predicted. American intelligence officials have told the White House that last week Russia continued to build its forces in Belarus.

Attacking from Belarus is a scenario U.S. officials have warned of for weeks. The Ukraine-Belarus border, they noted Friday, is far more lightly protected than the border in Ukraine’s far east, near Russia and separatist-controlled parts of the Donbas. Belarus also offers a shorter route to Kyiv.

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Credit…Maxar Technologies

Satellite imagery collected this weekend shows an apparent shift in Russia’s military deployment around Ukraine. In contrast to the large-scale deployments visible in imagery over recent weeks, some smaller deployments are now visible. Several units or troops have been deployed outside of bases or training grounds, with some positioned along tree lines, according to an analysis by Maxar Technologies, who released the imagery.

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Credit…Maxar Technologies

Russian units are also continuing to move closer to the border with Ukraine. Videos shared on social media in recent days showed military vehicles being moved. One video posted on TikTok captured a Russian military deployment less than five miles from the Ukrainian border.

Most of these locations are in the Belgorod area in western Russia, 25 miles from the border, which has recently seen an increase in military activity. In addition to the movement of vehicles, a new helicopter landing site was established over the last two weeks.

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Credit…Maxar Technologies

The Visual Investigations team at The Times, as well as outside researchers, have been tracking military activity in the region. However, the area has been cloudy for days, making it difficult to collect traditional satellite imagery. But there were few clouds around Belgorod on Sunday. New imagery revealed fresh tracks in the snow, leading analysts who pored over the images to focus on small deployment sites near the tree line.

The new findings come after U.S. intelligence officials claimed that 40 to 50 percent of the more than 150,000 Russian forces surrounding Ukraine have moved out of staging and into combat formation.

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Credit…Maxar Technologies

Experts who have been watching Russia’s recent military movements have paid special attention to the Belgorod region. Rochan Consulting, which tracks Russian deployments, stated in its Feb. 19 newsletter that “if Russia decides to attack, the Belgorod-Valuyki line will be one of the major staging areas for operations against Ukraine.”

The Maxar analysis noted that most of the combat units and equipment at Soloti, a military garrison outside the city of Valuyki, have left and that “extensive vehicle tracks and some convoys of armored equipment” have been seen in the area.

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Credit…Emile Ducke for The New York Times

Russia’s large-scale military deployment in Belarus, which the United States has long warned could be used as a pretext to build an invasion force aimed at Ukraine, will be extended beyond Sunday, when joint exercises had been scheduled to conclude, Belarus’s defense minister announced.

After repeated assurances from Russia and Belarus that the drills would end this weekend as planned, the Belarusian defense minister said on Sunday that the two countries’ militaries would continue to “test” their capabilities because of what they claimed were heightened tensions in eastern Ukraine.

The apparent extension of the exercises — which NATO has said involve 30,000 Russian troops, Moscow’s largest deployment on Belarus territory since the end of the Cold War — put further pressure on Ukraine, which shares a roughly 665-mile border with Belarus that is largely unguarded.

Belarus’s defense minister, Lt. Gen. Viktor Khrenin, cited an escalation of violence in eastern Ukraine as the reason for continuing the exercises, although Ukrainian officials say Russia-backed separatists are responsible for the increase in tensions.

On Sunday, separatist leaders suspended a wide range of public activities in the eastern region, known as the Donbas, according to a statement posted on their Telegram channel.

The statement released by the self-proclaimed government in the region offered no evidence that there was a danger to the public.

And it was part of an ominous shift in the long-running conflict in the Donbas, where the Russia-backed rebels in recent days have called for civilians to evacuate to Russia and for residents to take up arms against a possible invasion by Ukraine. Ukraine has denied plans to invade, and Western officials have described the separatists’ claims as lies intended to justify a military intervention by Moscow.

General Khrenin said on Sunday that because of “the growing military activity on the external borders of the Union State and the exacerbation of the situation in the Donbas, the presidents of Belarus and Russia have made the decision to continue the inspection of reaction forces.”

The union state, until recently a largely aspirational entity, refers to a merged state comprising Russia and Belarus that was initiated in 1997 but has recently begun to take on a concrete form as Russia has subordinated the Belarusian military and other state structures to its effective command.

General Khrenin did not elaborate on what tests would be carried out, or how long they would last. But his remarks indicated Russian troops would not be leaving Belarus, at least not immediately.

Russian military positions

Baranovichi

Asipovichy

Russia-Belarus

mock battle

Ukraine

BELARUS

Pochep

Klintsy

Brest

Luninets

RUSSIA

Klimovo

Rechytsa

Mazyr

Yelsk

POLAND

Kursk

Pogonovo

Vesyolaya Lopan

Kyiv

Lviv

Soloti

Boguchar

Kharkiv

UKRAINE

Kremenchuk

Luhansk

Svitlodarsk

Dnipro

Artillery fire

Donetsk

MOLDOVA

Kryvyi Rih

Persianovskiy

Rostov-on-Don

Tiraspol

ROMANIA

Odessa

BLACK SEA

Korenovsk

CRIMEA

Novoozerne

Feodosia

200 MILES

Yelnya

Minsk

Ukraine

Baranovichi

Russia-Belarus

mock battle

BELARUS

Pochep

RUSSIA

Mazyr

Kursk

POLAND

Kyiv

Lviv

Kharkiv

UKRAINE

Luhansk

Svitlodarsk

Dnipro

Artillery fire

Donetsk

Kryvyi Rih

MOLDOVA

Rostov-on-Don

Tiraspol

ROMANIA

Odessa

CRIMEA

Sevastopol

200 MILES

BLACK SEA

Ukraine

BELARUS

Baranovichi

RUSSIA

Russia-Belarus

mock battle

POL.

Kyiv

UKRAINE

Luhansk

Svitlodarsk

Donetsk

MOLDOVA

ROMANIA

Odessa

CRIMEA

Sevastopol

BLACK SEA

200 MILES

Source: Russian positions from Rochan Consulting as of Feb. 16. The New York Times

As part of the exercises dubbed “Allied Resolve,” which began on Feb. 10, Russia has deployed some of its most advanced and well-equipped forces to nine different bases and airfields around Belarus, according to Russia’s defense ministry. These include highly trained special forces units and airborne troops, together with powerful S-400 antiaircraft systems and hundreds of aircraft, tanks and armored vehicles. Some are stationed within just a few hundred miles of Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv.

The announcement on Sunday appeared to represent a reversal from earlier statements. Belarus’s foreign minister, Vladimir Makei, assured journalists last Wednesday that “not a single Russian serviceman and not a single piece of Russian military hardware will remain after these maneuvers.” Also last week, the Kremlin’s spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, said that Russia’s keeping troops in Belarus after the exercises “is not being considered.”

From the time the exercises were announced in January, Western officials have warned that the Kremlin could be using them to deploy forces for a possible invasion of Ukraine. Last month, Jens Stoltenberg, the NATO secretary general, warned that Russia had in the past used military exercises as a cover for preparing for military action, including before Russian troops seized the Crimean Peninsula in 2014.

“We’ve seen it many times before, that exercises, high readiness of forces as part of an exercise, is used as a disguise to launch an attack,” Mr. Stoltenberg said.

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Credit…Pool photo by Ina Fassbender

WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said on Sunday that President Biden was still willing to talk to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia despite the U.S. government’s assessment that Mr. Putin has already decided to invade Ukraine.

“We believe President Putin has made the decision, but until the tanks are actually rolling, and the planes are flying, we will use every opportunity and every minute we have to see if diplomacy can still dissuade President Putin from carrying this forward,” Mr. Blinken said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

Mr. Biden and Mr. Putin last spoke for one hour by telephone on Feb. 12. In that call, Mr. Biden warned Mr. Putin that a new invasion of Ukraine would result in “swift and severe” costs for Russia. Mr. Biden has promised to impose harsh economic sanctions against Russia if Mr. Putin carries out an invasion, although Beijing, which has strengthened its ties to Moscow, could help blunt those penalties.

Mr. Biden said on Friday that he believed Russia would invade Ukraine within days. In recent weeks, the Russian military deployed more than 150,000 troops around Ukraine, positioning them along the country’s western border with Ukraine, on the Crimean Peninsula that Russia seized from Ukraine in 2014, and in Belarus, which has a pro-Moscow government. U.S. officials describe it as the largest military buildup in Europe since World War II.

Mr. Blinken said on Sunday that Russia was still taking all the steps expected by the United States for what could be a violent and large-scale incursion into Ukraine.

“As we’ve described it, everything leading up to the actual invasion appears to be taking place,” he said, hours after returning from the Munich Security Conference, where he and Vice President Kamala Harris tried to rally nations to put pressure on Russia to defuse the crisis.

He also criticized Russia’s decision to keep troops in Belarus beyond this weekend, when joint military exercises between the allies had been scheduled to end. The Belarus Defense Ministry announced on Sunday that the countries were extending the exercises. U.S. officials have warned that the exercises could serve as a cover for Russia to position combat forces closer to the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv.

“Now they’re justifying the continuation of exercises — exercises, in quotation marks — that they said would end now,” Mr. Blinken said, describing it as part of Russia “continuing to ramp up tensions.”

Later in the morning, Mr. Blinken said on CBS News’ “Face the Nation” that a National Security Council meeting planned for Sunday would be “an opportunity to review the latest information, the latest intelligence, to check signals, to check plans.”

Mr. Blinken and Mr. Biden have said Russia would try to create a pretext for an invasion of Ukraine, perhaps in the form of violent “false flag” operations that Moscow would attribute to the Ukrainian military, and carry out a disinformation campaign to present justification for action. Russia-backed insurgents in eastern Ukraine have increased their artillery shelling of Ukrainian forces and civilian areas in recent days. Pro-Russia officials who control the city of Donetsk have ordered residents to evacuate, claiming without evidence that the Ukrainian military is about to attack.

The State Department said Thursday that Mr. Blinken had accepted an invitation from Sergey V. Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, to meet this week in Europe. The two struck a conciliatory tone when they met in Geneva on Jan. 21. But Mr. Putin proceeded to amass his military forces around Ukraine in the weeks afterward.

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Credit…Lynsey Addario for The New York Times

With Ukraine surrounded by Russian forces, Western governments warn that Moscow may use the two Russian-backed republics of Luhansk and Donetsk as the stage for a “false flag” attack on ethnic Russian civilians — and then cite it as justification when they storm across the border.

The fear is that the separatist territories could become the setting for a catastrophe, whether staged or accidental, that could lead to far wider violence. A stray shell, for example, might hit a residential building, or there could be a terrorist attack on fleeing refugees. Whatever the situation, Ukraine would be blamed, and Russia would have a pretext to invade.

Russia, despite repeated accusations from the West, says that it has no intention of invading, and that it simply wants its legitimate geopolitical interests respected.

On Sunday evening, the Ukrainian military issued a statement saying the Russian-backed separatists in the Luhansk region had opened fire with heavy artillery on their own capital city “with the goal of blaming the Ukrainian military.”

“In the absence of any aggressive action from the Ukrainian defenders, the occupiers themselves are blowing up infrastructure in the occupied territories and firing chaotically on towns,” the statement said. Russian news agencies reported artillery strikes in the area. There were no immediate reports of casualties.

While attacking one’s own side to blame an enemy may seem particularly sinister, it would not be the first time it has happened over the eight-year history of the two enclaves.

Analysts have suspected numerous violent events to be false-flag attacks. And insider violence by Russia’s security services or local proxies has been an integral aspect of the republics’ history for years, according to the Ukrainian intelligence services and public statements by comrades of some of those killed.

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Credit…Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times

TAGANROG, Russia — Lyudmila V. Ladnik fled her home in eastern Ukraine fearing that rising tensions could force her back into a bomb shelter like the one she took cover in seven years ago, when her town of Debaltsevo was shelled during fighting between Ukrainian forces and Russian-backed separatists.

But once she crossed into Russia on Sunday, part of a growing evacuation ordered by separatist leaders, she already wanted to go back.

“They lied to us,” fumed Ms. Ladnik, 62, referring to Russian authorities. She said she had been told that residents of the separatist areas would stay temporarily in Rostov, but on Sunday she learned that they would be moved farther inside Russia, to a town such as Kursk. With dismay, she wondered whether her evacuation to Russia would be longer than she had expected.

“We are now calling everyone back home, telling them to stay,” she said.

Confusion reigned on Sunday as more people crossed into Russia following a warning from Kremlin-backed rebel leaders that Ukraine was about to launch an attack on the separatist areas. The government in Kyiv has denied any such plans, and rebel leaders have produced no evidence to support their claim. The United States has said the warnings could be part of a Russian propaganda campaign to justify a military intervention by Moscow.

The situation in Ukraine’s east has escalated rapidly over the past week, with both the Ukrainian government and the Russia-backed rebels trading accusations of artillery fire in violation of cease-fire agreements.

While Russia has tried to portray the flow of refugees as proof of Ukraine’s menacing posture, the people who passed through the train station in Taganrog, a Russian city perched on the Azov Sea near the border with Ukraine, appeared helpless, frightened by the warnings of more violence but uncertain about what lay ahead. The commander of Ukraine’s Armed Forces said in a statement that refugees were being “used to escalate the situation in order to provoke another round of bloodshed.”

Ms. Ladnik was one of a few hundred people who boarded a train in Taganrog on Sunday, bound for deep inside Russia. Mothers dragged their children, and older people carried heavy suitcases into train cars.

They did not know their destination, and rumors spread. Some whispered that it might be Nizhny Novgorod in central Russia, others were less certain. Some disembarked the train once they learned that it could take them far away, afraid that they would not be able to afford a trip back, despite promises by President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia to pay them each about $130.

Vika Zubchenko, 27, decided to rely on her own resources. She and her sister-in-law Yelena Sayakina, 45, rented a house in Taganrog for two weeks. Her husband had to stay in their town of Debaltsevo, barred from leaving by the separatist authorities who called a mass mobilization of men of military age.

Ms. Zubchenko said that she was mostly spooked by the panic at home, in the eastern Ukraine region of Donetsk.

“Stores there are already out of batteries and candles,” said Ms. Zubchenko, expressing a common emotion among people coming from Ukraine’s breakaway lands who lived through heavy fighting in 2014 and 2015. Many who fled this time said they were concerned about their children.

“In 2015, I didn’t have her,” Ms. Zubchenko said, pointing at her 5-year-old daughter, Alisa.

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Credit…Cora Engelbrecht/The New York Times

About 200 people, mostly expatriates from Ukraine, gathered in London on Saturday to express solidarity with friends and family in the country who are living under the threat of a Russian invasion.

The rally convened at the foot of a statue of Volodymyr the Great, who ruled a region including modern-day Ukraine during the 10th and 11th centuries and is a symbol of Ukrainian nationalism. Under a cloudy sky, the demonstrators waved Ukrainian flags, sang nationalist songs and held aloft placards demonizing President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.

Many of the attendees said that they were clinging to the hope that a full-scale Russian invasion could be averted but that all signs suggested their homeland was on the brink of a terrible ordeal.

“The country I know and love might be destroyed,” said one of the rally’s organizers, Natalia Ravyluk, who is originally from Ukraine. “We are frustrated, and we are terrified.”

She said she feared that the recent American-led efforts to deter a Russian attack through diplomacy would not be enough.

“We have gathered like this every year since 2014, hoping we can help people remember the plight of Ukraine,” Ms. Ravyluk said, referring to the year that Russia annexed Crimea. “Now it feels like it is too late.”

The mounting tensions were echoed in the worried faces in the crowd, a mix of recent immigrants and Londoners of Ukrainian descent.

Some carried placards with Mr. Putin described as “Terrorist #1” or with messages such as, “Russia, hands off Ukraine.” Others wore Ukrainian flags draped over their shoulders. One group placed a pockmarked helmet and gas mask at the foot of Volodymyr the Great’s statue, forming a makeshift shrine. A few shed tears.

Vadym Prystaiko, Ukraine’s ambassador to Britain, was also present. “Many people here believe that Putin may finally be close to finishing what he started several years ago,” he said.

While much of the demonstrators’ fury was directed at Mr. Putin, some said they felt torn — relieved to be living in peace in London while also wanting to join their compatriots during this moment of peril.

“We are constantly plagued by this inner conflict — wanting to exchange our own safety for the safety of our families back home,” Diana Vartanova, one of the demonstrators, said.

Ms. Vartanova, 26, who moved to London 10 years ago, is from the eastern region of Zaporizhzhia. In the past few weeks, she said, she has wavered “somewhere between feeling optimistic and completely panicked.” After the British government released maps this week identifying possible routes of a Russian invasion, the reality of her family’s proximity to the front lines set in.

“After years of uncertainty, it feels like war is truly knocking on our door,” she said.

Toward the end of the ceremony on Saturday, a group of men dressed in dark clothing posed for photographs in front of the statue of Volodymyr. Some said they had served in the military in Ukraine and had been training twice a month at a camp outside London.

“You could say I’ve been waiting for this moment,” said one of the men, Roman Azarov, a former military officer who left Ukraine 20 years ago. Mr. Azarov shared photographs of himself engaged in military training, which he said he was ready to put to use. He said that he was in touch with many of his old army friends back home and that they were preparing to defend their country if a Russian invasion came.

“As soon as I get the word,” he said. “I will go.”

KYIV, Ukraine — Even as rocket attacks continued in eastern Ukraine, and as Russian soldiers remained massed at the borders for what Western leaders call an imminent invasion, people in Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, paused on Sunday to remember another moment of peril: the gunning down, eight years ago, of dozens of protesters by Ukraine’s government, which was then aligned with Moscow.

In Maidan square, the site of the massacre, a ceremony was held on Sunday morning to honor the “Heavenly Hundred,” as those killed on Feb. 20 and 21, 2014, are known here. More commemorations were planned in Kyiv and elsewhere in Ukraine.

The ceremony began with a rendition of the national anthem, followed by a rifle salute and a solemn procession of people laying flowers at the location where many were killed.

Iryna Horbachova, with tears in her eyes, said just as the people fought then, the nation is ready to fight again.

“For our identity, for our freedom,” she said.

“For our right to live in the kind of Ukraine we want. Not the kind into which Putin and Russia wants to drive us to,” referring to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.

Ukraine’s current government is invoking the spirit of the 2014 protest movement to rally the nation as it faces a far graver threat — a crisis that, like the earlier one, stems from Moscow’s desire to keep Ukraine from drawing closer to the West.

President Volodymyr Zelensky, who visited the square Sunday, said the people who died gave their lives “for the right to live in an independent state, in the family of European nations.”

“Their feat is a testament to the steadfastness of Ukrainians who continue to fight for their future,” he said.

It was a decision by the president at the time, Viktor F. Yanukovych, not to sign an agreement that would have brought Ukraine closer to the European Union that spurred tens of thousands of people to take to the streets in late 2013. As the protests grew, Maidan square, in central Kyiv, became the focus of international attention — and, then, global shock at the killings.

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Credit…Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times

The protesters, at great personal risk, persevered. For days, they tossed their tents, sleeping bags and endless numbers of tires onto a barrier of fire, hoping to ward off the security forces.

After the massacre in the square, Mr. Yanukovych negotiated a deal with French and German intermediaries to stay in power in exchange for a promise of early elections. But the protesters negotiated their own arrangement with midlevel security service commanders, who understood that Mr. Yanukovych intended to remain in power by blaming them for the shootings.

Under the deal, the police commanders vacated the city, escaping prosecution, but also leaving Mr. Yanukovych and his inner circle without police protection.

Mr. Yanukovych fled to Russia, and Ukraine’s Parliament voted to oust him from office. New elections were held. But Moscow soon responded. Its soldiers, insignia removed from their combat fatigues (Ukrainians referred to them as “little green men”), seized Crimea. And a Russia-backed separatist movement emerged in the eastern Donbas region, starting an armed conflict that has never stopped and is now rising sharply again.

Shelling rose significantly there on Saturday. Separatist leaders urged a mass evacuation to Russia and called men to arms — claiming, with no evidence, that Ukraine was planning a large-scale attack on territory they control.

Just as many Ukrainians in 2014 were stunned that a massacre could take place in their capital, some are finding it hard to accept that a full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine is possible. The idea that Russia is planning “the biggest war in Europe since 1945,” as Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain warned in a BBC interview this weekend, is something that many in Kyiv simply refuse to believe.

Mr. Zelensky also invoked the nation’s recent history on Saturday in Munich, when he called on Western leaders to place sanctions on Russia now, before an invasion takes place.

“Eight years ago,” he said, “Ukrainians made their choice, and many gave their lives for that choice.”

Marc Santora

Marc Santora📍Reporting from Kyiv, Ukraine

Marc Santora

Marc Santora📍Reporting from Kyiv, Ukraine

Cinemagraph

Associated Press

With the U.S. warning that war could envelop Ukraine any day, I went to the central square in Kyiv on Sunday to watch a memorial that in many ways helps explain the current crisis.

Here’s what I saw →

Marc Santora and Maria Varenikova

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Credit…Brendan Hoffman for The New York Times

The feeling that Russia and the United States are entering a new version of the Cold War has become inescapable.

President Biden hinted at it on Tuesday in the East Room of the White House, pledging that if Russia invaded Ukraine, “we will rally the world to oppose its aggression.” President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia drove the matter home on Saturday, when he oversaw a test launch of nuclear-capable hypersonic missiles that can evade American defenses.

“We are entering a new stage of confrontation,” said Dmitry Suslov, an international relations specialist at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow. “After this crisis, we will naturally be much more explicit and open in acknowledging that we are enemies, we are adversaries, with all the ensuing consequences.”

For now, no one knows just how the world will emerge from the crisis — whether Mr. Putin is staging an elaborate, expensive bluff or is truly on the verge of launching the biggest military offensive in Europe since 1945. But it does appear clear that Mr. Putin’s overarching aim is to revise the outcome of the original Cold War, even if it is at the cost of deepening a new one.

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Credit…Alexey Malgavko/Reuters

Uncertainty drove oil prices higher when trading opened on Sunday as more Russian troops massed on Ukraine’s borders, but they fell later in the night as news reports said President Biden would consider direct talks with his Russian counterpart as long as Russia does not invade.

Oil prices had been essentially flat over the last week as traders anticipated a potential nuclear deal with Iran that could allow the country to bring millions of gallons of oil to the market. But with tensions ratcheting up along the Russia-Ukraine border, oil markets opened in evening trading more than a dollar a barrel higher. In a sign of the volatility of the market, prices eased later on Sunday night and were down about 50 cents a barrel.

President Biden and other senior American officials have said that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has already decided to invade Ukraine despite the threat of crippling sanctions. Any invasion would most likely interrupt Russian natural gas and oil shipments to parts of Europe and then be followed by a decline in purchases of Russian energy by the West. Nevertheless, negotiations continued on several fronts.

The United States and many other industrialized countries will most likely release millions of barrels of oil from their strategic reserves as soon as a significant invasion occurs. There is also talk in Washington of suspending federal taxes on gasoline. Such measures could help restrain prices at the pump, at least for a short time.

The average national price of a gallon of gasoline rose nearly 4 cents over the last week to $3.53, roughly 90 cents higher than a year ago. Gasoline prices at the pump usually follow global oil price trends by a week or two.

Despite the growing likelihood of conflict, the American benchmark oil price fell nearly 2 percent last week while the global benchmark price rose by less than a dollar a barrel. Both benchmarks remain above $90 a barrel, the highest level since 2014.

With prices fluctuating on Sunday night as traders kept a close eye on developments, the American oil benchmark, West Texas Intermediate, was around $92 a barrel, while the global Brent benchmark was about $94 a barrel.

The United States is not a big importer of Russian oil, but Russia provides roughly one of every 10 barrels the global economy consumes as the third largest producer after the United States and Saudi Arabia. Russian oil exports go mostly to Europe and Asia, and global markets remain tight as production has not kept up with the economic rebound from the Covid-19 pandemic.

American oil production has gradually increased in recent months, and Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are believed to have spare production capacity. But it would take a nuclear deal with Iran to quickly send new barrels onto global markets. Iran has as much as 80 million barrels in storage it could sell relatively quickly and it could ramp up its production to 1.2 million barrels a day within eight months. But in a 100-million-barrel-a-day market, that would not resolve shortages if there is a prolonged war in Eastern Europe.

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Credit…Lynsey Addario for The New York Times

For weeks, as Russia sent more and more troops to Ukraine’s borders, the Biden administration has predicted that President Vladimir V. Putin would orchestrate some sort of pretext for an invasion, probably in Ukraine’s east, where a conflict with Moscow-backed rebels has been underway for years.

Now, developments there — driven in large part by the separatists widely seen as Russia’s proxies — could be giving him such an opportunity.

On Saturday, artillery fire escalated sharply in the east, and thousands of residents fled to Russia in chaotic evacuations, fueled by rebel leaders’ assertions, without evidence, that Ukraine’s military was planning a large-scale attack on the territory they control.

Western leaders have scoffed at the idea that Ukraine would launch such an operation while surrounded by Russian forces, and Ukrainian officials dismissed the claim as “a cynical Russian lie.” But the ginned-up panic was having real effects, with refugees frantically boarding buses and refugee tent camps popping up across the Russian border. Separatists urged women and children to leave and told men to register to fight.

In Moscow, Mr. Putin engaged in a dramatic display of military theater, presiding over tests of nuclear-capable missiles. Tensions between the United States and Russia have not been this high since the Cold War, and Russia’s nuclear drills appeared carefully timed to deter the West from direct military involvement in Ukraine.

Western leaders gathering in Munich, where a security conference ends Sunday, issued repeated calls for a diplomatic resolution to the crisis, despite President Biden’s claim on Friday that Mr. Putin had already decided to invade.

But in Ukraine, the fighting edged perilously closer to a tipping point.

The firing of mortars, artillery and rocket-propelled grenades by separatist rebels along the front line roughly doubled the level of the previous two days, the Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs said. Two Ukrainian soldiers were killed and five wounded, the military said.

Ukrainian officials said the shelling came exclusively from the separatists, who are seen as a proxy for Russia. New York Times reporters at the scene witnessed shelling from separatists and saw no return fire from the Ukrainian forces, although residents in the separatist regions said there was shelling from both sides.

“I have a small baby,” said Nadya Lapygina, who said her town in the breakaway region of Luhansk was hit by artillery and mortar fire. “You have no idea how scary it is to hide him from the shelling.”

Intense artillery barrages targeted a pocket of government-controlled territory around the town of Svitlodarsk, a spot that has worried security analysts for weeks for its proximity to dangerous industrial infrastructure, including storage tanks for poisonous gas.

A stray shell from returning government fire risks hitting a chemical plant about six miles away in separatist-controlled territory. The plant, one of Europe’s largest fertilizer factories, has pressurized tanks and more than 12 miles of pipelines holding poisonous ammonia gas.

An explosion there could produce a toxic cloud that could serve as an excuse for a Russian invasion or, American officials have warned, Russia could stage its own explosion there to justify intervention.

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Credit…Alexander Ermochenko/Reuters

Russia has issued a growing drumbeat of accusations against the Ukrainian government, all without evidence, that center on a single word: genocide.

“What is happening in the Donbas today is genocide,” President Vladimir V. Putin said last week, referring to the region in Ukraine’s east where a conflict with separatists has been underway for years.

Senior Russian officials and state media have since echoed Mr. Putin’s use of the word. Russian diplomats circulated a document to the United Nations Security Council accusing Ukraine of “exterminating the civilian population” in its east.

The Kremlin has long asserted that Ukraine’s government persecutes ethnic Russians and Russian-speaking citizens. The charge, backed by lurid and false tales of anti-Russian violence, was used as justification in 2014 for Russia’s annexation of Crimea and its invasion of eastern Ukraine.

The recent resurgence of such language, now voiced directly by Mr. Putin, indicates what analysts and Western governments say may again be a prelude to invasion.

But invocations of genocide represent more than just a superficial casus belli. They reflect Moscow’s belief that, in a world dominated by a hostile West, it is the rightful protector of Russian populations throughout the former Soviet republics.

In that worldview, any break from Moscow’s influence within its sphere constitutes an attack on the Russian people as a whole — particularly in Ukraine, which Mr. Putin considers effectively Russian.

Claims of genocide, then, are a way to assert Russia’s sovereignty throughout an ethnic Russian empire that extends well beyond its formal borders — and a right to control that empire with force. “There’s a long history of use and abuse of genocide rhetoric in post-Soviet countries,” said Matthew Kupfer, a Kyiv-based analyst who has studied Moscow’s use of such claims.

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Credit…Sergey Pivovarov/Reuters

The United States now believes that Russia has as many as 190,000 troops in or near Ukraine, nearly twice as many as there were in January, according to an assessment made public on Friday by Michael Carpenter, the U.S. ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

That was a significantly higher number than the 150,000 troops President Biden referred to earlier this week, and the 100,000 in January.

But American officials said the new number includes some forces that were not previously counted — most notably Russian forces in Crimea, as well as separatist forces led by Russian military officers in the Donbas region, a portion of eastern Ukraine they have controlled since 2014. The officials did not provide a breakdown of these forces.

The new number also includes some additional forces that have moved into Belarus, according to American officials briefed on the intelligence. And the combat forces have increased, according to a defense official. There are now between 120 and 125 battalion tactical groups, up from 83 earlier in February.

Counting Russian forces is an imprecise science. The size of Russian battalions can vary, depending on their role. And while Russia has taken fewer pains to hide the movement of troops in recent weeks, moving units during the day rather than at night, the United States has not detected all of Russia’s combat preparations, officials said.

Russia has also, according to outside analysts, blocked some means of monitoring Russian rail traffic, which had been used to count forces flowing to and from the Ukrainian border.

A U.S. defense official said that as many as 75,000 of the Russian forces outside of Ukraine were in combat formations, ready to mount a full-scale invasion in days.

U.S. and allied officials have been divided on whether Russia intends an invasion aimed at occupying a wide swathe of the country, or if it wants simply to solidify its control in the Donbas region. But the defense official said that within the Russian forces outside Ukraine’s borders are reservist units, the kinds of forces that would be tasked not with taking new territory but with conducting occupation operations. And even as Russia has made a show of pulling back some forces, it has pushed other forces closer to the border.

Thomas Bullock, a senior open-source intelligence analyst with Jane’s, said Russia had moved air defense systems, long-range artillery and army units to sites about 18 miles from Ukraine’s borders in recent days, particularly in the area where the borders of Ukraine, Belarus and Russia converge.

“It’s very difficult to hide at this stage because the world is watching and they are moving a lot of equipment in,” Mr. Bullock said.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/02/20/world/ukraine-russia-putin-biden