As Russia continues its war operations in Ukraine, US President Joe Biden accused Russian forces of committing genocide in the country.

"Yes, I called it genocide," Biden said, adding, "We will let the lawyers decide internationally whether or not it qualifies, but it sure seems that way to me."

President Vladimir Putin had ordered a "special military operation" on February 24 against Ukraine however his forces have met with fierce resistance from Ukrainian forces with Russia declaring that it will now&nbsp;concentrate its forces in the eastern part of Ukraine in the Donbas area.

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/photos/how-harpoon-anti-ship-missiles-in-ukraines-arsenal-can-disbalance-russia-in-black-sea-region-470481">Also Read in Pics:&nbsp;How Harpoon anti-ship missiles in Ukraine's arsenal can disbalance Russia&nbsp;</a>

"It's become clearer and clearer that Putin is just trying to wipe out the idea of even being able to be a Ukrainian," the US president asserted.

Ukraine President Zelensky agreed with Biden saying it was the "true words of a true leader."

"Calling things by their names is essential to stand up to evil," Zelensky said.

Watch:&nbsp;Russia accused of using phosphorus bombs in Ukraine. What are these?

<iframe allowfullscreen="" autoplay="1" class="includeVideo" frameborder="0" height="350" src="https://www.wionews.com/videos/russia-accused-of-using-phosphorus-bombs-in-ukraine-what-are-these-470585/embed" style="width:100%;max-width:560px;" width="560"></iframe>

Meanwhile, Zelensky offered to swap Russian oligarch Viktor Medvedchuk with Ukrainians captured by Russia.

"I propose to the Russian Federation to exchange this guy of yours for our boys and our girls who are now in Russian captivity," Zelensky said in a video message.

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/photos/in-pics-russia-destroys-worlds-largest-commercial-airplane-in-ukraine-mriya-468458">Also Read in Pics:&nbsp;Antonov AN-225, world's largest plane, in tatters</a>

"And may Medvedchuk be an example for you. Even the former oligarch did not escape. What can we say about much simpler criminals from the Russian hinterland? We will get everyone," the Ukraine president warned.

(With inputs from Agencies)

As Russia continues its war operations in Ukraine, US President Joe Biden accused Russian forces of committing genocide in the country. "Yes, I called it genocide," Biden said, adding, "We will let the lawyers decide internationally whether or not it qualifies, but it sure seems that way to me.

As Russia continues its war operations in Ukraine, US President Joe Biden accused Russian forces of committing genocide in the country. "Yes, I called it genocide," Biden said, adding, "We will let the lawyers decide internationally whether or not it qualifies, but it sure seems that way to me." President Vladimir Putin had ordered a "special military operation" on February 24 against Ukraine however his forces have met with fierce resistance from Ukrainian forces with Russia declaring that it will now concentrate its forces in the eastern part of Ukraine in the Donbas area. Also Read in Pics: How Harpoon anti-ship missiles in Ukraine's arsenal can disbalance Russia "It's become clearer and clearer that Putin is just trying to wipe out the idea of even being able to be a Ukrainian," the US president asserted. Ukraine President Zelensky agreed with Biden saying it was the "true words of a true leader." "Calling things by their names is essential to stand up to evil," Zelensky said. Watch: Russia accused of using phosphorus bombs in Ukraine. What are these? Meanwhile, Zelensky offered to swap Russian oligarch Viktor Medvedchuk with Ukrainians captured by Russia. "I propose to the Russian Federation to exchange this guy of yours for our boys and our girls who are now in Russian captivity," Zelensky said in a video message. Also Read in Pics: Antonov AN-225, world's largest plane, in tatters "And may Medvedchuk be an example for you. Even the former oligarch did not escape. What can we say about much simpler criminals from the Russian hinterland? We will get everyone," the Ukraine president warned. (With inputs from Agencies)

Ukraine war: President Biden accuses Russian forces of committing 'genocide'

History of urban warfare & why Russia will find it difficult to conquer Kyiv

&nbsp;President Joe Biden’s high-stakes speech in Warsaw, Poland, on Saturday was crafted with the intent of throwing the full weight of the United States behind its European allies, while framing the Russian invasion of Ukraine as part of a global “battle between democracy and autocracy.”

And although the forceful denunciation of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war resonated with some leaders, it was an unprompted ad-lib that captured the attention of foreign policy experts, members of Congress and NATO allies.

“For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power,” Biden declared, a comment that two White House officials said was not included in his prepared speech.

Even as top administration officials spent Sunday walking back Biden’s remarks, the statement had already sent ripple effects throughout the world, highlighting just how powerful nine unprompted words from Biden can be, particularly during a foreign policy crisis.

“I wouldn’t use this kind of words,” French President Emmanuel Macron said in a television interview Sunday, when asked to comment on Biden’s speech. He said he hoped to obtain a cease-fire and the withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukraine through diplomacy.

Until Biden’s unscripted moment, the speech had largely achieved its intended goals, lawmakers, allies and foreign policy experts said. But immediately afterwards&nbsp;Biden’s aides worried that his surprising remark might roil some of those allies the president was determined to keep unified.

Taken literally, the remark meant the United States would be reversing a policy of not pushing for regime change. Biden’s staff felt as if it had little choice but to play down the off-the-cuff comment.

“We do not have a strategy of regime change in Russia or anywhere else, for that matter,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in Jerusalem after meeting with Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid. “In this case, as in any case, it’s up to the people of the country in question.”

Michal Baranowski, a senior fellow and director of the Warsaw office of the German Marshall Fund who attended Biden’s speech, acknowledged that Biden’s comment could be perceived as “a call for regime change.” But he said it was unlikely to lead to further escalation with Russia.

But Republican members of Congress worried the Kremlin would seize on the remark.

Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, described Biden’s speech as “very strong, despite the ad-lib at the end.”

President Joe Biden’s high-stakes speech in Warsaw, Poland, on Saturday was crafted with the intent of throwing the full weight of the United States behind its European allies, while framing the Russian invasion of Ukraine as part of a global “battle between democracy and autocracy.

President Joe Biden’s high-stakes speech in Warsaw, Poland, on Saturday was crafted with the intent of throwing the full weight of the United States behind its European allies, while framing the Russian invasion of Ukraine as part of a global “battle between democracy and autocracy.” And although the forceful denunciation of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war resonated with some leaders, it was an unprompted ad-lib that captured the attention of foreign policy experts, members of Congress and NATO allies. “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power,” Biden declared, a comment that two White House officials said was not included in his prepared speech. Even as top administration officials spent Sunday walking back Biden’s remarks, the statement had already sent ripple effects throughout the world, highlighting just how powerful nine unprompted words from Biden can be, particularly during a foreign policy crisis. “I wouldn’t use this kind of words,” French President Emmanuel Macron said in a television interview Sunday, when asked to comment on Biden’s speech. He said he hoped to obtain a cease-fire and the withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukraine through diplomacy. Until Biden’s unscripted moment, the speech had largely achieved its intended goals, lawmakers, allies and foreign policy experts said. But immediately afterwards Biden’s aides worried that his surprising remark might roil some of those allies the president was determined to keep unified. Taken literally, the remark meant the United States would be reversing a policy of not pushing for regime change. Biden’s staff felt as if it had little choice but to play down the off-the-cuff comment. “We do not have a strategy of regime change in Russia or anywhere else, for that matter,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in Jerusalem after meeting with Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid. “In this case, as in any case, it’s up to the people of the country in question.” Michal Baranowski, a senior fellow and director of the Warsaw office of the German Marshall Fund who attended Biden’s speech, acknowledged that Biden’s comment could be perceived as “a call for regime change.” But he said it was unlikely to lead to further escalation with Russia. But Republican members of Congress worried the Kremlin would seize on the remark. Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, described Biden’s speech as “very strong, despite the ad-lib at the end.”

After Biden’s fiery speech, nine unscripted words reverberate

Ukraine's parliament said Russian forces fired at a nuclear research facility in Kharkiv as reports claimed Slavutych town where workers at Chernobyl nuclear plant live has been captured by Russian forces.

Kharkiv has come under heavy bombardment by Russian forces as local officials claimed Russia has been firing missiles from the Black Sea including artillery and mortar attack from nearby areas.

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/photos/why-russias-missiles-in-ukraine-are-failing-to-hit-the-target-465689">Also Read in Pics:&nbsp;Why Russia's missiles in Ukraine are failing to hit the target</a>

"It is currently impossible to estimate the extent of damage due to hostilities that do not stop in the area of the nuclear installation," State nuclear regulatory inspectorate said.

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❗❗❗ WARNING 
Russian army fired again at a nuclear research facility in Kharkiv 
 
"It is currently impossible to estimate the extent of damage due to hostilities that do not stop in the area of the nuclear installation," — State Nuclear Regulatory Inspectorate.
— Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine - Ukrainian Parliament (@ua_parliament) <a href="https://twitter.com/ua_parliament/status/1507794278893899780?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 26, 2022</a></blockquote>
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Kharkiv mayor Igor Terekhov had said there is "indiscriminatory bombing" taking place in the area while declaring that "it's a war against Kharkiv".

Watch:&nbsp;Smoke engulfs Lviv after powerful explosions rock the city

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Russian troops had entered the city on February 24 as President Putin announced "special military operation" against Ukraine, however, Ukraine's forces resisted the initial Russian attack pushing back Putin's troops to the outskirts of the city.&nbsp;

There has been heavy artillery fire from the Russian forces for the past few weeks with administrative buildings being the target of attacks including homes and apartment blocks.

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/photos/ukraine-war-russias-orlan-10-krasnopol-laser-guided-drones-462157">Also Read in Pics:&nbsp;Ukraine war: Russia's Orlan-10 Krasnopol laser-guided drones</a>

Ukraine forces have been battling Russia's overwhelming force with new anti-missile defences in&nbsp;Kharkiv , reports claim.&nbsp;

(With inputs from Agencies)

Ukraine's parliament said Russian forces fired at a nuclear research facility in Kharkiv as reports claimed Slavutych town where workers at Chernobyl nuclear plant live has been captured by Russian forces.

Ukraine's parliament said Russian forces fired at a nuclear research facility in Kharkiv as reports claimed Slavutych town where workers at Chernobyl nuclear plant live has been captured by Russian forces. Kharkiv has come under heavy bombardment by Russian forces as local officials claimed Russia has been firing missiles from the Black Sea including artillery and mortar attack from nearby areas. Also Read in Pics: Why Russia's missiles in Ukraine are failing to hit the target "It is currently impossible to estimate the extent of damage due to hostilities that do not stop in the area of the nuclear installation," State nuclear regulatory inspectorate said. ❗❗❗ WARNING Russian army fired again at a nuclear research facility in Kharkiv "It is currently impossible to estimate the extent of damage due to hostilities that do not stop in the area of the nuclear installation," — State Nuclear Regulatory Inspectorate. — Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine - Ukrainian Parliament (@ua_parliament) March 26, 2022 × Kharkiv mayor Igor Terekhov had said there is "indiscriminatory bombing" taking place in the area while declaring that "it's a war against Kharkiv". Watch: Smoke engulfs Lviv after powerful explosions rock the city Russian troops had entered the city on February 24 as President Putin announced "special military operation" against Ukraine, however, Ukraine's forces resisted the initial Russian attack pushing back Putin's troops to the outskirts of the city. There has been heavy artillery fire from the Russian forces for the past few weeks with administrative buildings being the target of attacks including homes and apartment blocks. Also Read in Pics: Ukraine war: Russia's Orlan-10 Krasnopol laser-guided drones Ukraine forces have been battling Russia's overwhelming force with new anti-missile defences in Kharkiv , reports claim. (With inputs from Agencies)

Russian army fired again at a nuclear research facility in Kharkiv, says Ukraine

The Kremlin dismissed a remark by U.S. President Joe Biden on Saturday that Vladimir Putin "can not remain in power," saying it was up to Russians to choose their own president.

Asked about Biden's comment, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Reuters: "That's not for Biden to decide. The president of Russia is elected by Russians. "

A White House official said Biden, who was speaking in Warsaw, had not been calling for "regime change" in Russia, but his point was that "Putin cannot be allowed to exercise power over his neighbours or the region".

Peskov did not immediately respond to a follow-up request for reaction to the White House clarification.

Watch | Joe Biden delivers remarks from Warsaw, says Putin is strangling democracy &amp; World order

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Biden has stepped up personal attacks on Putin since the Russian president ordered the invasion of Ukraine last month, and the Kremlin has replied by questioning the U.S. leader's state of mind.

Last week, it accused Biden of making "personal insults" towards Putin after he labelled him a "war criminal" and a "murderous dictator", and said his remarks appeared to have been fuelled by irritation, fatigue, and forgetfulness.

Dmitry Rogozin, the outspoken head of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, suggested mockingly on social media that the clarification of Biden's latest remarks had come from the White House medical unit.

Rogozin has previously derided what he called "Alzheimer's sanctions" imposed on Russia by the United States over the war in Ukraine, which Moscow calls a special military operation.

The Kremlin dismissed a remark by U.S. President Joe Biden on Saturday that Vladimir Putin "can not remain in power," saying it was up to Russians to choose their own president.

The Kremlin dismissed a remark by U.S. President Joe Biden on Saturday that Vladimir Putin "can not remain in power," saying it was up to Russians to choose their own president. Asked about Biden's comment, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Reuters: "That's not for Biden to decide. The president of Russia is elected by Russians. " A White House official said Biden, who was speaking in Warsaw, had not been calling for "regime change" in Russia, but his point was that "Putin cannot be allowed to exercise power over his neighbours or the region". Peskov did not immediately respond to a follow-up request for reaction to the White House clarification. Watch | Joe Biden delivers remarks from Warsaw, says Putin is strangling democracy & World order Biden has stepped up personal attacks on Putin since the Russian president ordered the invasion of Ukraine last month, and the Kremlin has replied by questioning the U.S. leader's state of mind. Last week, it accused Biden of making "personal insults" towards Putin after he labelled him a "war criminal" and a "murderous dictator", and said his remarks appeared to have been fuelled by irritation, fatigue, and forgetfulness. Dmitry Rogozin, the outspoken head of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, suggested mockingly on social media that the clarification of Biden's latest remarks had come from the White House medical unit. Rogozin has previously derided what he called "Alzheimer's sanctions" imposed on Russia by the United States over the war in Ukraine, which Moscow calls a special military operation.

Kremlin says it's not for Biden to say if Putin stays in power

Just hours after President Joe Biden said President Putin "cannot stay in power", the White House clarified that the US president was "not discussing Putin's power in Russia, or regime change."

Biden called Putin a "butcher" as he termed the Ukraine war as a "battle for freedom" during a speech in Warsaw. "We stand with you," he told Ukraine while talking about collective defence within NATO countries.

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/photos/why-russias-missiles-in-ukraine-are-failing-to-hit-the-target-465689">Also Read in Pics:&nbsp;Why Russia's missiles in Ukraine are failing to hit the target</a>

The US president earlier met Ukrainian foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba and defence minister Oleksii Reznikov amid heavy fighting in Ukraine as the foreign minister gave Biden a fragment of a Russian missile that struck a base in Yavoriv.

"Don't even think about moving on one single inch of NATO territory," Biden warned in his speech pointing towards the Russian president, adding, "Let there be no doubt that this war has already been a strategic failure for Russia."

Watch:&nbsp;Joe Biden delivers says Putin is strangling democracy &amp; world order

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Meanwhile, Ukraine said its forces had recaptured the northeast town of Trostianets near the Ukraine border. Ukraine's defence ministry declared that Trostianets in the Sumy region has been liberated from Russian occupation troops.

Reports claimed Russian forces had taken control of the town where the staff working at the Chernobyl nuclear site live. The Russians reportedly detained the mayor leading to protests in the area.

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The mayor of the town was later released. The &nbsp;Chernobyl nuclear plant was seized by Russian forces on February 24 as President Putin announced a "special military operation" against Ukraine.

(With inputs from Agencies)

Just hours after President Joe Biden said President Putin "cannot stay in power", the White House clarified that the US president was "not discussing Putin's power in Russia, or regime change.

Just hours after President Joe Biden said President Putin "cannot stay in power", the White House clarified that the US president was "not discussing Putin's power in Russia, or regime change." Biden called Putin a "butcher" as he termed the Ukraine war as a "battle for freedom" during a speech in Warsaw. "We stand with you," he told Ukraine while talking about collective defence within NATO countries. Also Read in Pics: Why Russia's missiles in Ukraine are failing to hit the target The US president earlier met Ukrainian foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba and defence minister Oleksii Reznikov amid heavy fighting in Ukraine as the foreign minister gave Biden a fragment of a Russian missile that struck a base in Yavoriv. "Don't even think about moving on one single inch of NATO territory," Biden warned in his speech pointing towards the Russian president, adding, "Let there be no doubt that this war has already been a strategic failure for Russia." Watch: Joe Biden delivers says Putin is strangling democracy & world order Meanwhile, Ukraine said its forces had recaptured the northeast town of Trostianets near the Ukraine border. Ukraine's defence ministry declared that Trostianets in the Sumy region has been liberated from Russian occupation troops. Reports claimed Russian forces had taken control of the town where the staff working at the Chernobyl nuclear site live. The Russians reportedly detained the mayor leading to protests in the area. Also Read in Pics: How could Russian President Vladimir Putin be prosecuted for war crimes in Ukraine? The mayor of the town was later released. The Chernobyl nuclear plant was seized by Russian forces on February 24 as President Putin announced a "special military operation" against Ukraine. (With inputs from Agencies)

President Biden not seeking regime change in Russia, clarifies White House

US President Joe Biden imposed fresh sanctions on Russia while declaring that invasion of Ukraine had begun as Russian lawmakers gave Putin approval to deploy "peacekeepers" in two Ukrainian regions.

"There's no question that Russia is the aggressor, so we're clear eyed about the challenges we're facing," Biden said while adding that, "there is still time to avert the worst-case scenario that will bring untold suffering to millions of people."

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/photos/target-ukraine-russias-icbm-strategy-revealed-455357">Also Read in Pics:&nbsp;Target Ukraine: Russia's ICBM strategy revealed</a>

Putin on Monday had declared that Russia will recognise Donetsk and Lugansk situated in eastern Ukraine as separate republics while&nbsp;declaring&nbsp;that the Minsk peace agreements on Ukraine's conflict no longer existed.

Watch:&nbsp;Inside Vladimir Putin's mind

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"The best solution would be if the current Kyiv authorities themselves refused to join NATO and maintained neutrality," Putin said as NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg said Russia "continues to plan for a full-scale attack on Ukraine."

Germany on Tuesday announced halting of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline project with Russia as the UK and the European Union announced more sanctions against Russia.

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/photos/ukraine-crisis-how-putin-built-russias-army-as-a-potent-force-453715">Also Read in Pics:&nbsp;How Putin built Russia's Army as a potent force</a>

US Secretary of state Antony Blinken cancelled his meeting with Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov adding that "it does not make&nbsp;sense to go forward with that meeting" since "invasion is beginning and Russia has made clear its wholesale rejection of diplomacy".

Biden added that the US would continue to provide defensive weapons to Ukraine and reinforce NATO troops amid Russian threat of invasion on Ukraine.

Amid escalating tensions, reports said one Ukrainian soldier died in clashes on Tuesday in the separatist region of eastern Ukraine.

(With inputs from Agencies)

US President Joe Biden imposed fresh sanctions on Russia while declaring that invasion of Ukraine had begun as Russian lawmakers gave Putin approval to deploy "peacekeepers" in two Ukrainian regions.

US President Joe Biden imposed fresh sanctions on Russia while declaring that invasion of Ukraine had begun as Russian lawmakers gave Putin approval to deploy "peacekeepers" in two Ukrainian regions. "There's no question that Russia is the aggressor, so we're clear eyed about the challenges we're facing," Biden said while adding that, "there is still time to avert the worst-case scenario that will bring untold suffering to millions of people." Also Read in Pics: Target Ukraine: Russia's ICBM strategy revealed Putin on Monday had declared that Russia will recognise Donetsk and Lugansk situated in eastern Ukraine as separate republics while declaring that the Minsk peace agreements on Ukraine's conflict no longer existed. Watch: Inside Vladimir Putin's mind "The best solution would be if the current Kyiv authorities themselves refused to join NATO and maintained neutrality," Putin said as NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg said Russia "continues to plan for a full-scale attack on Ukraine." Germany on Tuesday announced halting of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline project with Russia as the UK and the European Union announced more sanctions against Russia. Also Read in Pics: How Putin built Russia's Army as a potent force US Secretary of state Antony Blinken cancelled his meeting with Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov adding that "it does not make sense to go forward with that meeting" since "invasion is beginning and Russia has made clear its wholesale rejection of diplomacy". Biden added that the US would continue to provide defensive weapons to Ukraine and reinforce NATO troops amid Russian threat of invasion on Ukraine. Amid escalating tensions, reports said one Ukrainian soldier died in clashes on Tuesday in the separatist region of eastern Ukraine. (With inputs from Agencies)

'Beginning an invasion': US imposes fresh sanctions against Russia

Who is the real Mr Putin? Meet the judo fighter who worked for the KGB

In a series of top-secret meetings in October, President Joe Biden’s national security team presented grim intelligence that would soon trigger a fierce effort to prevent what could become the largest armed conflict in Europe since World War II.

Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, was preparing to invade Ukraine, top intelligence and military officials told Biden. Gathering each morning in the Oval Office for the global threat assessment known as the President’s Daily Brief, they described satellite images of Russian forces methodically advancing toward Ukraine’s border.

Not only did the United States have images of troops moving into position, it also had the Russian military’s plans for a campaign against Ukraine — elements of which had already begun. At one of the morning meetings, Biden dispatched William J. Burns, the CIA director, to Moscow with a message for Putin:

We know what you’re planning to do.

Stopping him would be a challenge. Many of America’s closest allies were sceptical that Putin — a master of disinformation — would actually invade. The use of U.S. military force against Russia was off the table, so the allies would have to threaten Putin with economic pain so severe it would also have consequences in Europe and the United States. And it was far from certain that Republicans in Congress would back whatever the administration did.

On Monday, after delivering a grievance-filled speech attacking Ukraine’s sovereignty, Putin ordered troops into two Russia-backed separatist regions in the country. But it remains unclear how far, or quickly, the Russian military will advance. And by day’s end, the United States and its allies imposed only limited sanctions, reserving the full might of their response for moves that Putin might yet make.

The White House acknowledged from the start that its campaign to stop Putin might not actually prevent Russia from invading Ukraine. But at the very least, White House officials say, Biden exposed Putin and his true intentions, which helped unite, at least for now, the at-times fractious NATO alliance.

Over the course of 3 1/2 months, Biden made three critical decisions about how to handle Russia’s provocations, according to interviews with more than a dozen senior administration officials and others who requested anonymity to discuss confidential meetings. Early on, the president approved a recommendation to share intelligence far more broadly with allies than was typical, officials said. The idea was to avoid disagreements about tough economic sanctions by ensuring that everyone knew what the United States knew about Putin’s actions.

Biden also gave the green light for an unprecedented public information campaign against Putin. With the support of his top intelligence officials — and with a promise to protect the intelligence agencies’ “sources and methods” — the president allowed a wave of public releases aimed at preventing Putin from employing his usual denials to divide his adversaries.

And when it became clear this year that Putin was continuing to build up forces at Ukraine’s border, the president approved sending Ukraine more weapons, including Javelin anti-tank missiles, and deploying more troops to other countries in Eastern Europe as a show of solidarity with Ukraine and to reassure nervous allies on NATO’s eastern flank.

On Sunday morning, nearly four months after those meetings, Biden once again gathered his national security team.

They had been right about Putin’s intentions. And they had managed to secure unity among allies and even Republicans behind sanctions. But all along, the decision about whether to go to war was Putin’s alone. Despite all of the efforts, it looked like war was inevitable.

At the meeting Sunday, the discussion shifted to new questions: whether to send more troops to NATO countries; how to support a Ukrainian resistance when Russia invades; how to deal with a flood of refugees; and how to manage the economic consequences of sanctions in Europe and the United States.

“The risk for the United States is that the allies don’t stay together,” said Jeremy Bash, a former chief of staff at the CIA and the Defense Department under President Barack Obama. “This crisis and this mode of a standoff with Russia is going to be around for months and years, not days and weeks.”

Wooing Allies

Meetings with the leaders of America’s closest allies began days after the secret October briefings, during Biden’s trip to Rome for a meeting of the leaders of the Group of 20 nations. There, he convened the biggest NATO members known as “the quint”: the United States, Britain, France, Germany and Italy.

The president and his counterparts began to sketch out the response to Russia’s aggression that day in Rome. But soon, Biden’s plan to widen the circle of trust on Ukraine was put in place, officials said.

In a series of secure video meetings from the White House, the president and his national security team started sharing highly classified information with a larger group, including Poland, Romania, and the presidents of the European Union and Canada, as well as the top officials at NATO.

Not everyone was convinced.

On Nov. 17, Avril D. Haines, the director of national intelligence, travelled to NATO headquarters for a key presentation. Although the United States has sometimes baulked at sharing its best intelligence with the entire NATO alliance, worried about Russian moles in various governments, in this case the United States had already delivered a broad warning to Russia about what it knew. The briefing marked a significant shift in the allied view, officials said.

European and U.S. intelligence officials said that Putin initially believed Europe and the United States would remain divided and unwilling to impose strong sanctions, particularly in the defense of Ukraine. He thought that he could build up a significant force and then either attack Ukraine or extract concessions from Kyiv, without much unified opposition from Europe, the officials said.

“According to our assessment, at the end of summer, Putin likely gave instructions to prepare for military options against Ukraine,” said Mikk Marran, the director general of the Estonian Foreign Intelligence Service. “And in autumn 2021, we detected the attitude of President Putin: He felt the West was weak and the issue of Ukraine needed to be fixed.”

In fact, the alliance had its shaky moments. Four years of President Donald Trump’s raging against NATO had taken its toll. And Biden had angered some key European allies by what they described as a failure to consult with them about the details of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. A spat with France over a nuclear submarine deal did not help.

But Putin’s assessment ended up being a miscalculation, according to U.S. and European officials. As the United States shared more intelligence both with NATO and individual allies, the positions hardened against Russia. The Eastern European intelligence official said that Putin’s timetable for an attack might well have been pushed back in the face of the unexpected cohesion among the allies.

“I have been in constant contact with our allies in Europe, with Ukrainians,” Biden told reporters in early December.

He said that he was putting together what he believed would be “the most comprehensive and meaningful set of initiatives to make it very, very difficult for Mr. Putin to go ahead and do what people are worried he may do.

“But that’s in play right now,” he added.

Going Public

By late November, Biden knew it was time to talk with Putin again. The Russian force was still growing and the threat of war loomed.

But the president and his aides were worried that the Russian president would use a conversation as another opportunity to manipulate public sentiment by lying about the reality playing out in the frigid areas along the Ukrainian border.

As he prepared for the call with Putin, Biden approved the public release of an unclassified intelligence document showing the positioning of what officials said at the time could eventually grow to be a huge force along the border, including heavy armor, artillery and other equipment.

“Our theory has been that putting true information into the public domain, which was bearing out in real time because everybody can see what they’re actually doing, was the best way to prevent the Russians and what they always do, which is to try to control the narrative with disinformation,” a senior administration official recalled recently.

The idea was a risky one. Weaponizing information about Russian plans could make the administration look like it was stoking war rather than trying to prevent one.

In the past, intelligence agencies had blocked American proposals to release information, which some policymakers thought of as an overly cautious blanket rejection. But in this case, Burns, a career diplomat, supported a targeted strategy to declassify and release information, if the sources and methods could be protected. Haines also backed the strategy.

The Dec. 3 document became the first of a series of efforts to declassify intelligence about Russian plans by the United States and Britain, which would come to include details of a Russian sabotage campaign, a coup plot, an elaborate effort to use a faked video to create a pretext for invasion and other false flag operations plotted by Russia’s military intelligence agency, the GRU.

Biden and Putin spoke by secure video link for an hour and 59 minutes on the morning of Dec. 7, just three days after the declassified document went public. According to U.S. officials, the president offered Putin a choice: agree to diplomacy or risk severe economic and political consequences from the sanctions that would be imposed after an invasion of Ukraine.

In some ways, Biden was distinctly prepared for the moment. Having visited Ukraine a half-dozen times over the past decade, he knows the country better than any other U.S. president. His foreign policy team is made up of what are often called “Atlanticists,” who have spent their lives thinking about European security. (Antony Blinken, the secretary of state, grew up in Paris.)

Aides also said Biden’s long history with Putin made him less susceptible to the Russian president’s tactics. In conversations about Ukraine, officials said that Putin often liked to expound for long periods of time on minute details of the Minsk agreement, a complicated years-old effort at diplomacy with Ukraine, hoping to confuse the situation.

Mobilizing Troops

On Christmas Day, the Russian military publicly announced the withdrawal of 10,000 troops from Ukraine’s border, calling it proof that Putin had no intentions of invading his neighbor any time soon.

Inside the White House, the president and his team were not buying it.

Intelligence officials had seen repeated instances in which the Russians would move a battalion tactical group close to the border, set up the infrastructure necessary for a rapid invasion, and then move the troops back out, leaving a shell that could be used by other battalions, the Russian national guard or other military forces loyal to Putin.

The movement of troops back and forth was not evidence of a retreat, officials said. It was evidence of the opposite: preparations for an invasion of Ukraine.

But Biden had agreed to send Blinken and others for a week of intense diplomacy in Europe the week of Jan. 10. Those talks culminated in discussions in Vienna on Thursday, Jan. 13, with the goal of convincing Putin not to risk crippling sanctions by sending his forces into Ukraine.

The next day, tens of thousands of Russian troops started pouring into Belarus, Ukraine’s northern neighbor, for what Russia called joint military exercises.

On Jan. 18, the administration ratcheted up their public information campaign with a State Department briefing for reporters on Belarus, revealing the extent of the Russian activity there.

The next day, hours before Biden held a two-hour news conference in the East Room of the White House, he met virtually from the Situation Room with a half dozen senators — Democrats and Republicans — who had just returned from Ukraine. Unlike his many clashes with Republicans over domestic policy, Biden had secured largely bipartisan support.

The news conference did not go well. In response to questions, Biden suggested the allies might not respond to what he called a “minor incursion” by Russia. His team spent the later part of the day quickly reassuring President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the president of Ukraine, and allies that any incursion — no matter how small — would trigger punishing sanctions.

For months, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin had convened twice weekly meetings with top civilian and military leaders to hone the military’s options. The meetings, called “Op/Policy Sync” sessions, focused in part on one of Austin’s three “north stars” or guiding strategic principles: avoiding a direct confrontation in or near Ukraine between Russia and the United States, the world’s two largest nuclear powers.

By the end of January, however, both Austin, a retired four-star Army general known for his cautious judgments, and Gen. Mark A. Milley, chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a military historian who carries with him a map of Ukraine marked with tactical details, no longer saw any possible ambiguity in what more than 100,000 Russian forces intended to do. These weren’t just training exercises, as the Russians insisted.

“Mr. President, we’ve entered a period of unambiguous warning,” Austin told Biden, according to a senior Pentagon official. “Putin is putting his troops in position to attack, and it’s now time to be in position to respond rapidly.”

In a meeting on Jan. 22 at Camp David, the presidential retreat in Maryland, senior Pentagon officials presented Biden with several options that would shift U.S. military assets much closer to Putin’s doorstep, administration officials said.

The options included sending 1,000 to 5,000 troops to Eastern European countries, with the potential to increase that number tenfold if things deteriorated, officials said.

A week later, on Feb. 2, the Pentagon announced the first group of nearly 5,000 paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, would deploy to Poland to reassure a pivotal ally on NATO’s eastern flank.

The Endgame

For months, Biden had tried to avoid a war in Europe. But now, with Russian forces on the move, the president and his aides have new challenges.

After Biden and his top aides predicted for weeks that Putin would likely launch an all-out assault on Ukraine, a more limited Russian incursion could undercut the resolve of the alliance that Biden has assembled.

Ben Rhodes, who served as a deputy national security adviser in the Obama administration, said Putin might not immediately advance into the rest of Ukraine, avoiding the scenes of mass refugees and major battles that officials had predicted.

“It’s easier to get leaders to do things that are hard if the more dramatic consequences are evident to everybody,” he said. “You could be in a strange window of time when there’s disagreement.”

A slow-moving invasion, in which Putin’s forces remain in the disputed, separatist-held areas for weeks or months, could also strain the bipartisan support that had coalesced around Biden’s tough approach in the months leading up to Monday’s actions by the Russian leader.

Some Republicans lashed out immediately, urging the president to move more quickly to impose sanctions. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., wrote on Twitter that Putin’s moves Monday amounted to “a declaration of war against the people of Ukraine.”

He added: “His decision should immediately be met with forceful sanctions to destroy the ruble and crush the Russian oil and gas sector.”

And now that it appears that the Russian president is ignoring those threats, Biden risks being accused by Republicans and other critics of having failed to do enough to prevent an invasion in the first place. Rhodes said that criticism would be unfair.

“Sanctions can impose a cost and make things more difficult for Putin,” Rhodes said. “But they can’t shake his calculus entirely.”

In a series of top-secret meetings in October, President Joe Biden’s national security team presented grim intelligence that would soon trigger a fierce effort to prevent what could become the largest armed conflict in Europe since World War II.

In a series of top-secret meetings in October, President Joe Biden’s national security team presented grim intelligence that would soon trigger a fierce effort to prevent what could become the largest armed conflict in Europe since World War II. Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, was preparing to invade Ukraine, top intelligence and military officials told Biden. Gathering each morning in the Oval Office for the global threat assessment known as the President’s Daily Brief, they described satellite images of Russian forces methodically advancing toward Ukraine’s border. Not only did the United States have images of troops moving into position, it also had the Russian military’s plans for a campaign against Ukraine — elements of which had already begun. At one of the morning meetings, Biden dispatched William J. Burns, the CIA director, to Moscow with a message for Putin: We know what you’re planning to do. Stopping him would be a challenge. Many of America’s closest allies were sceptical that Putin — a master of disinformation — would actually invade. The use of U.S. military force against Russia was off the table, so the allies would have to threaten Putin with economic pain so severe it would also have consequences in Europe and the United States. And it was far from certain that Republicans in Congress would back whatever the administration did. On Monday, after delivering a grievance-filled speech attacking Ukraine’s sovereignty, Putin ordered troops into two Russia-backed separatist regions in the country. But it remains unclear how far, or quickly, the Russian military will advance. And by day’s end, the United States and its allies imposed only limited sanctions, reserving the full might of their response for moves that Putin might yet make. The White House acknowledged from the start that its campaign to stop Putin might not actually prevent Russia from invading Ukraine. But at the very least, White House officials say, Biden exposed Putin and his true intentions, which helped unite, at least for now, the at-times fractious NATO alliance. Over the course of 3 1/2 months, Biden made three critical decisions about how to handle Russia’s provocations, according to interviews with more than a dozen senior administration officials and others who requested anonymity to discuss confidential meetings. Early on, the president approved a recommendation to share intelligence far more broadly with allies than was typical, officials said. The idea was to avoid disagreements about tough economic sanctions by ensuring that everyone knew what the United States knew about Putin’s actions. Biden also gave the green light for an unprecedented public information campaign against Putin. With the support of his top intelligence officials — and with a promise to protect the intelligence agencies’ “sources and methods” — the president allowed a wave of public releases aimed at preventing Putin from employing his usual denials to divide his adversaries. And when it became clear this year that Putin was continuing to build up forces at Ukraine’s border, the president approved sending Ukraine more weapons, including Javelin anti-tank missiles, and deploying more troops to other countries in Eastern Europe as a show of solidarity with Ukraine and to reassure nervous allies on NATO’s eastern flank. On Sunday morning, nearly four months after those meetings, Biden once again gathered his national security team. They had been right about Putin’s intentions. And they had managed to secure unity among allies and even Republicans behind sanctions. But all along, the decision about whether to go to war was Putin’s alone. Despite all of the efforts, it looked like war was inevitable. At the meeting Sunday, the discussion shifted to new questions: whether to send more troops to NATO countries; how to support a Ukrainian resistance when Russia invades; how to deal with a flood of refugees; and how to manage the economic consequences of sanctions in Europe and the United States. “The risk for the United States is that the allies don’t stay together,” said Jeremy Bash, a former chief of staff at the CIA and the Defense Department under President Barack Obama. “This crisis and this mode of a standoff with Russia is going to be around for months and years, not days and weeks.” Wooing Allies Meetings with the leaders of America’s closest allies began days after the secret October briefings, during Biden’s trip to Rome for a meeting of the leaders of the Group of 20 nations. There, he convened the biggest NATO members known as “the quint”: the United States, Britain, France, Germany and Italy. The president and his counterparts began to sketch out the response to Russia’s aggression that day in Rome. But soon, Biden’s plan to widen the circle of trust on Ukraine was put in place, officials said. In a series of secure video meetings from the White House, the president and his national security team started sharing highly classified information with a larger group, including Poland, Romania, and the presidents of the European Union and Canada, as well as the top officials at NATO. Not everyone was convinced. On Nov. 17, Avril D. Haines, the director of national intelligence, travelled to NATO headquarters for a key presentation. Although the United States has sometimes baulked at sharing its best intelligence with the entire NATO alliance, worried about Russian moles in various governments, in this case the United States had already delivered a broad warning to Russia about what it knew. The briefing marked a significant shift in the allied view, officials said. European and U.S. intelligence officials said that Putin initially believed Europe and the United States would remain divided and unwilling to impose strong sanctions, particularly in the defense of Ukraine. He thought that he could build up a significant force and then either attack Ukraine or extract concessions from Kyiv, without much unified opposition from Europe, the officials said. “According to our assessment, at the end of summer, Putin likely gave instructions to prepare for military options against Ukraine,” said Mikk Marran, the director general of the Estonian Foreign Intelligence Service. “And in autumn 2021, we detected the attitude of President Putin: He felt the West was weak and the issue of Ukraine needed to be fixed.” In fact, the alliance had its shaky moments. Four years of President Donald Trump’s raging against NATO had taken its toll. And Biden had angered some key European allies by what they described as a failure to consult with them about the details of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. A spat with France over a nuclear submarine deal did not help. But Putin’s assessment ended up being a miscalculation, according to U.S. and European officials. As the United States shared more intelligence both with NATO and individual allies, the positions hardened against Russia. The Eastern European intelligence official said that Putin’s timetable for an attack might well have been pushed back in the face of the unexpected cohesion among the allies. “I have been in constant contact with our allies in Europe, with Ukrainians,” Biden told reporters in early December. He said that he was putting together what he believed would be “the most comprehensive and meaningful set of initiatives to make it very, very difficult for Mr. Putin to go ahead and do what people are worried he may do. “But that’s in play right now,” he added. Going Public By late November, Biden knew it was time to talk with Putin again. The Russian force was still growing and the threat of war loomed. But the president and his aides were worried that the Russian president would use a conversation as another opportunity to manipulate public sentiment by lying about the reality playing out in the frigid areas along the Ukrainian border. As he prepared for the call with Putin, Biden approved the public release of an unclassified intelligence document showing the positioning of what officials said at the time could eventually grow to be a huge force along the border, including heavy armor, artillery and other equipment. “Our theory has been that putting true information into the public domain, which was bearing out in real time because everybody can see what they’re actually doing, was the best way to prevent the Russians and what they always do, which is to try to control the narrative with disinformation,” a senior administration official recalled recently. The idea was a risky one. Weaponizing information about Russian plans could make the administration look like it was stoking war rather than trying to prevent one. In the past, intelligence agencies had blocked American proposals to release information, which some policymakers thought of as an overly cautious blanket rejection. But in this case, Burns, a career diplomat, supported a targeted strategy to declassify and release information, if the sources and methods could be protected. Haines also backed the strategy. The Dec. 3 document became the first of a series of efforts to declassify intelligence about Russian plans by the United States and Britain, which would come to include details of a Russian sabotage campaign, a coup plot, an elaborate effort to use a faked video to create a pretext for invasion and other false flag operations plotted by Russia’s military intelligence agency, the GRU. Biden and Putin spoke by secure video link for an hour and 59 minutes on the morning of Dec. 7, just three days after the declassified document went public. According to U.S. officials, the president offered Putin a choice: agree to diplomacy or risk severe economic and political consequences from the sanctions that would be imposed after an invasion of Ukraine. In some ways, Biden was distinctly prepared for the moment. Having visited Ukraine a half-dozen times over the past decade, he knows the country better than any other U.S. president. His foreign policy team is made up of what are often called “Atlanticists,” who have spent their lives thinking about European security. (Antony Blinken, the secretary of state, grew up in Paris.) Aides also said Biden’s long history with Putin made him less susceptible to the Russian president’s tactics. In conversations about Ukraine, officials said that Putin often liked to expound for long periods of time on minute details of the Minsk agreement, a complicated years-old effort at diplomacy with Ukraine, hoping to confuse the situation. Mobilizing Troops On Christmas Day, the Russian military publicly announced the withdrawal of 10,000 troops from Ukraine’s border, calling it proof that Putin had no intentions of invading his neighbor any time soon. Inside the White House, the president and his team were not buying it. Intelligence officials had seen repeated instances in which the Russians would move a battalion tactical group close to the border, set up the infrastructure necessary for a rapid invasion, and then move the troops back out, leaving a shell that could be used by other battalions, the Russian national guard or other military forces loyal to Putin. The movement of troops back and forth was not evidence of a retreat, officials said. It was evidence of the opposite: preparations for an invasion of Ukraine. But Biden had agreed to send Blinken and others for a week of intense diplomacy in Europe the week of Jan. 10. Those talks culminated in discussions in Vienna on Thursday, Jan. 13, with the goal of convincing Putin not to risk crippling sanctions by sending his forces into Ukraine. The next day, tens of thousands of Russian troops started pouring into Belarus, Ukraine’s northern neighbor, for what Russia called joint military exercises. On Jan. 18, the administration ratcheted up their public information campaign with a State Department briefing for reporters on Belarus, revealing the extent of the Russian activity there. The next day, hours before Biden held a two-hour news conference in the East Room of the White House, he met virtually from the Situation Room with a half dozen senators — Democrats and Republicans — who had just returned from Ukraine. Unlike his many clashes with Republicans over domestic policy, Biden had secured largely bipartisan support. The news conference did not go well. In response to questions, Biden suggested the allies might not respond to what he called a “minor incursion” by Russia. His team spent the later part of the day quickly reassuring President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the president of Ukraine, and allies that any incursion — no matter how small — would trigger punishing sanctions. For months, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin had convened twice weekly meetings with top civilian and military leaders to hone the military’s options. The meetings, called “Op/Policy Sync” sessions, focused in part on one of Austin’s three “north stars” or guiding strategic principles: avoiding a direct confrontation in or near Ukraine between Russia and the United States, the world’s two largest nuclear powers. By the end of January, however, both Austin, a retired four-star Army general known for his cautious judgments, and Gen. Mark A. Milley, chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a military historian who carries with him a map of Ukraine marked with tactical details, no longer saw any possible ambiguity in what more than 100,000 Russian forces intended to do. These weren’t just training exercises, as the Russians insisted. “Mr. President, we’ve entered a period of unambiguous warning,” Austin told Biden, according to a senior Pentagon official. “Putin is putting his troops in position to attack, and it’s now time to be in position to respond rapidly.” In a meeting on Jan. 22 at Camp David, the presidential retreat in Maryland, senior Pentagon officials presented Biden with several options that would shift U.S. military assets much closer to Putin’s doorstep, administration officials said. The options included sending 1,000 to 5,000 troops to Eastern European countries, with the potential to increase that number tenfold if things deteriorated, officials said. A week later, on Feb. 2, the Pentagon announced the first group of nearly 5,000 paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, would deploy to Poland to reassure a pivotal ally on NATO’s eastern flank. The Endgame For months, Biden had tried to avoid a war in Europe. But now, with Russian forces on the move, the president and his aides have new challenges. After Biden and his top aides predicted for weeks that Putin would likely launch an all-out assault on Ukraine, a more limited Russian incursion could undercut the resolve of the alliance that Biden has assembled. Ben Rhodes, who served as a deputy national security adviser in the Obama administration, said Putin might not immediately advance into the rest of Ukraine, avoiding the scenes of mass refugees and major battles that officials had predicted. “It’s easier to get leaders to do things that are hard if the more dramatic consequences are evident to everybody,” he said. “You could be in a strange window of time when there’s disagreement.” A slow-moving invasion, in which Putin’s forces remain in the disputed, separatist-held areas for weeks or months, could also strain the bipartisan support that had coalesced around Biden’s tough approach in the months leading up to Monday’s actions by the Russian leader. Some Republicans lashed out immediately, urging the president to move more quickly to impose sanctions. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., wrote on Twitter that Putin’s moves Monday amounted to “a declaration of war against the people of Ukraine.” He added: “His decision should immediately be met with forceful sanctions to destroy the ruble and crush the Russian oil and gas sector.” And now that it appears that the Russian president is ignoring those threats, Biden risks being accused by Republicans and other critics of having failed to do enough to prevent an invasion in the first place. Rhodes said that criticism would be unfair. “Sanctions can impose a cost and make things more difficult for Putin,” Rhodes said. “But they can’t shake his calculus entirely.”

Wooing allies, publicising Putin’s plans: Inside Biden’s race to prevent war

Amid tensions with Ukraine at the border, US President Joe Biden said on Saturday that he is "convinced" that President Putin has made the decision to invade Ukraine.

"As of this moment, I'm convinced he's made the decision. We have reason to believe that," Biden said on Putin's plan to attack neighbouring Ukraine.

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/photos/russias-next-wonder-weapon-kedr-intercontinental-ballistic-missile-454013">Also Read in Pics |&nbsp;Russia's next wonder weapon: Kedr intercontinental ballistic missile</a>

Russia had said earlier this week that it&nbsp;had pulled out some troops after military exercise&nbsp;in Belarus and later announced that tank&nbsp;units involved in Crimea were returning to the barracks.

However, the US president warned of an imminent Russian attack despite Putin's recent claims of pullback.

"We believe they will target Ukraine's capital Kyiv, a city of 2.8 million innocent people," the US president added while asserting that "diplomacy is always a possibility."

Watch:&nbsp;Is Moscow manufacturing a pretext for an invasion?

<div class="videoWrapper trancodeVideo"><iframe allowfullscreen="" autoplay="1" class="includeVideo" frameborder="0" height="350" src="https://www.wionews.com/videos/gravitas-ukraine-crisis-is-moscow-manufacturing-a-pretext-for-an-invasion-454450/embed" style="width:100%;max-width:560px;" width="560"></iframe></div>

Biden&nbsp;said Russia could "set up a false justification to act against Ukraine" while pointing out that there are over "150,000 troops arrayed on its border". Ukraine's defence forces said pro-Russian rebels had violated ceasefire 53 times in 24 hours amid escalating tensions at the border.&nbsp;

Meanwhile, Observers from the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe said there has been a dramatic rise in "kinetic activity along the contact line in eastern Ukraine" with ceasefire violations taking place.

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/photos/ukraine-crisis-us-thaad-vs-russian-s-400-missile-defence-system-451457">Also Read in Pics:&nbsp;&nbsp;US THAAD vs Russian S-400 missile defence system</a>

Biden said Ukraine President Zelenksy's intention to attend the Munich Security Conference may not be a "wise choice" due to the current situation but added that "it's his decision".

Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin met Belarus leader&nbsp;Alexander Lukashenko and said there was a "deterioration of the situation". Belarus and Russian forces have been involved in large scale military exercises.

(With inputs from Agencies)

Amid tensions with Ukraine at the border, US President Joe Biden said on Saturday that he is "convinced" that President Putin has made the decision to invade Ukraine.

Amid tensions with Ukraine at the border, US President Joe Biden said on Saturday that he is "convinced" that President Putin has made the decision to invade Ukraine. "As of this moment, I'm convinced he's made the decision. We have reason to believe that," Biden said on Putin's plan to attack neighbouring Ukraine. Also Read in Pics | Russia's next wonder weapon: Kedr intercontinental ballistic missile Russia had said earlier this week that it had pulled out some troops after military exercise in Belarus and later announced that tank units involved in Crimea were returning to the barracks. However, the US president warned of an imminent Russian attack despite Putin's recent claims of pullback. "We believe they will target Ukraine's capital Kyiv, a city of 2.8 million innocent people," the US president added while asserting that "diplomacy is always a possibility." Watch: Is Moscow manufacturing a pretext for an invasion? Biden said Russia could "set up a false justification to act against Ukraine" while pointing out that there are over "150,000 troops arrayed on its border". Ukraine's defence forces said pro-Russian rebels had violated ceasefire 53 times in 24 hours amid escalating tensions at the border. Meanwhile, Observers from the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe said there has been a dramatic rise in "kinetic activity along the contact line in eastern Ukraine" with ceasefire violations taking place. Also Read in Pics: US THAAD vs Russian S-400 missile defence system Biden said Ukraine President Zelenksy's intention to attend the Munich Security Conference may not be a "wise choice" due to the current situation but added that "it's his decision". Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin met Belarus leader Alexander Lukashenko and said there was a "deterioration of the situation". Belarus and Russian forces have been involved in large scale military exercises. (With inputs from Agencies)

I'm convinced he's made the decision, Biden on Putin's plan to attack Ukraine

The staccato thud of exploding shells can be heard along the tense lines in Ukraine's Lugansk area between government forces and rebel-held territory.

On Kyiv's side of the front, civilian residences and buildings appear to have been caught in the crossfire of Thursday's bombardment, with debris scattered across the once-peaceful floors.

"They've been shooting every now and then for the last two days," a resident of the border town of Stanytsia Luhanska tells AFP as he stands in the ruins of his home.&nbsp;

Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin claims that the situation in Eastern Ukraine is worsening.

Since 2014, Russia has backed separatist insurgents in territories controlled by the separatists.

Moscow maintains that it has no plans to invade Ukraine and accuses the West of inciting "hysteria."&nbsp;

According to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, escalation of the Russia-Ukraine conflict into a war would be "catastrophic," as he said at the opening ceremony of the Munich Security Conference on Friday, which Moscow will not attend this year.&nbsp;

"With a concentration of Russian troops around Ukraine, I am deeply concerned about heightened tensions and increased speculation about a military conflict in Europe," Guterres said. If that happened, "it would be catastrophic," he warned. "There is no alternative to diplomacy."

(With inputs from agencies)

The staccato thud of exploding shells can be heard along the tense lines in Ukraine's Lugansk area between government forces and rebel-held territory. On Kyiv's side of the front, civilian residences and buildings appear to have been caught in the crossfire of Thursday's bombardment, with debris scattered across the once-peaceful floors.

The staccato thud of exploding shells can be heard along the tense lines in Ukraine's Lugansk area between government forces and rebel-held territory. On Kyiv's side of the front, civilian residences and buildings appear to have been caught in the crossfire of Thursday's bombardment, with debris scattered across the once-peaceful floors. "They've been shooting every now and then for the last two days," a resident of the border town of Stanytsia Luhanska tells AFP as he stands in the ruins of his home. Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin claims that the situation in Eastern Ukraine is worsening. Since 2014, Russia has backed separatist insurgents in territories controlled by the separatists. Moscow maintains that it has no plans to invade Ukraine and accuses the West of inciting "hysteria." According to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, escalation of the Russia-Ukraine conflict into a war would be "catastrophic," as he said at the opening ceremony of the Munich Security Conference on Friday, which Moscow will not attend this year. "With a concentration of Russian troops around Ukraine, I am deeply concerned about heightened tensions and increased speculation about a military conflict in Europe," Guterres said. If that happened, "it would be catastrophic," he warned. "There is no alternative to diplomacy." (With inputs from agencies)

Explosions heard after shelling destroys houses in East Ukraine

Russia continues to deny planning an invasion of Ukraine, but Western leaders say it could happen in the coming days.

According to US authorities, Russia currently has up to 190,000 troops stationed in and around Ukraine.

They claim it is Europe's "largest military mobilisation" since World War II.

US President Joe Biden will host a call with the leaders of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Romania, Britain, the EU and NATO.&nbsp; 
 
<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/number-of-russian-troops-around-ukraine-reaches-149000-kyiv-454326">Also read | Number of Russian troops around Ukraine reaches 149,000: Kyiv</a>

In light of this warlike situation, world leaders are meeting in Munich today for the first time since 1999 for a security conference, but Russia will be absent.

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Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin claims that the situation in Eastern Ukraine is worsening.

Since 2014, Russia has backed separatist insurgents in territories controlled by the separatists.

Moscow maintains that it has no plans to invade Ukraine and accuses the West of inciting "hysteria."&nbsp; 
 
<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/more-tanks-returning-to-permanent-bases-after-drills-says-russia-454247">Also read | More tanks returning to permanent bases after drills, says Russia</a>

According to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, escalation of the Russia-Ukraine conflict into a war would be "catastrophic," as he said at the opening ceremony of the Munich Security Conference on Friday, which Moscow will not attend this year.&nbsp; 
 
Watch | Gravitas: Ukraine Crisis: Is Moscow manufacturing a pretext for an invasion?

<div class="videoWrapper trancodeVideo"><iframe allowfullscreen="" autoplay="1" class="includeVideo" frameborder="0" height="350" src="https://www.wionews.com/videos/gravitas-ukraine-crisis-is-moscow-manufacturing-a-pretext-for-an-invasion-454450/embed" style="width:100%;max-width:560px;" width="560"></iframe></div>

 
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&nbsp;

"With a concentration of Russian troops around Ukraine, I am deeply concerned about heightened tensions and increased speculation about a military conflict in Europe," Guterres said. If that happened, "it would be catastrophic," he warned. "There is no alternative to diplomacy."

(With inputs from agencies)

Russia continues to deny planning an invasion of Ukraine, but Western leaders say it could happen in the coming days. According to US authorities, Russia currently has up to 190,000 troops stationed in and around Ukraine.

Russia continues to deny planning an invasion of Ukraine, but Western leaders say it could happen in the coming days. According to US authorities, Russia currently has up to 190,000 troops stationed in and around Ukraine. They claim it is Europe's "largest military mobilisation" since World War II. US President Joe Biden will host a call with the leaders of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Romania, Britain, the EU and NATO. Also read | Number of Russian troops around Ukraine reaches 149,000: Kyiv In light of this warlike situation, world leaders are meeting in Munich today for the first time since 1999 for a security conference, but Russia will be absent. Officials from the United States and Ukraine have warned that the information war might worsen ahead of any Russian military engagement. That war appears to have escalated in the last 24 hours. × Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin claims that the situation in Eastern Ukraine is worsening. Since 2014, Russia has backed separatist insurgents in territories controlled by the separatists. Moscow maintains that it has no plans to invade Ukraine and accuses the West of inciting "hysteria." Also read | More tanks returning to permanent bases after drills, says Russia According to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, escalation of the Russia-Ukraine conflict into a war would be "catastrophic," as he said at the opening ceremony of the Munich Security Conference on Friday, which Moscow will not attend this year. Watch | Gravitas: Ukraine Crisis: Is Moscow manufacturing a pretext for an invasion? Also Read in Pics: How Putin built Russia's Army as a potent force "With a concentration of Russian troops around Ukraine, I am deeply concerned about heightened tensions and increased speculation about a military conflict in Europe," Guterres said. If that happened, "it would be catastrophic," he warned. "There is no alternative to diplomacy." (With inputs from agencies)

Russian troop buildup is the largest since World War II: US

US secretary of state Anthony Blinken told the United Nations on Friday that Russia is seeking to unleash a major invasion in the "coming days".

The US diplomat citing intelligence inputs asked Russia to "announce today with no qualification, equivocation or deflection that Russia will not invade Ukraine. State it clearly. State it plainly to the world."

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/photos/ukraine-crisis-how-putin-built-russias-army-as-a-potent-force-453715">Also Read in Pics:&nbsp;Ukraine crisis: How Putin built Russia's Army as a potent force</a>

President Biden said Russia was planning a "false flag operation" in order to invade Ukraine as a pretext to launch an attack.&nbsp;

"They have not moved any of their troops out. They've moved more troops in," the US president said, adding, "Every indication we have is that they're prepared to go into Ukraine." Biden reiterated that path to diplomacy "is a way through this".

Blinken said Russia should demonstrate its intentions "by sending your troops, your tanks, your planes, back to their barrack" and allow its diplomats to negotiate.

Watch:&nbsp;Is Russia conducting a proxy war in Ukraine?

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Russia has repeatedly scoffed at reports that its forces are ready to invade Ukraine even as the US has said heavy artillery, tanks and thousands of troops&nbsp;are stationed at the border with Ukraine.

Meanwhile, shelling was reported as exchanges of fire took place between Ukraine's forces and pro-Russian separatists

Russia had submitted a security document to the United States and NATO stating that ex-Soviet states&nbsp;should not be inducted into the European military alliance referring to Ukraine, however, both NATO and the US have rejected Russia's direction.

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"In the absence of will on the American side to negotiate firm and legally binding guarantees on our security from the United States and its allies, Russia will be forced to respond, including with military-technical measures," the Russian foreign ministry said.

Russia had announced earlier this week that its forces were returning to their permanent bases after drills in Belarus including those who had taken part in the Crimea military exercise. However, the US said it needs proof of Russian withdrawal.

US officials say there are at least 150,000 Russian troops massed along the southern, eastern and northern borders of Ukraine.

(With inputs from Agencies)

 
&nbsp;

US secretary of state Anthony Blinken told the United Nations on Friday that Russia is seeking to unleash a major invasion in the "coming days". The US diplomat citing intelligence inputs asked Russia to "announce today with no qualification, equivocation or deflection that Russia will not invade Ukraine.

US secretary of state Anthony Blinken told the United Nations on Friday that Russia is seeking to unleash a major invasion in the "coming days". The US diplomat citing intelligence inputs asked Russia to "announce today with no qualification, equivocation or deflection that Russia will not invade Ukraine. State it clearly. State it plainly to the world." Also Read in Pics: Ukraine crisis: How Putin built Russia's Army as a potent force President Biden said Russia was planning a "false flag operation" in order to invade Ukraine as a pretext to launch an attack. "They have not moved any of their troops out. They've moved more troops in," the US president said, adding, "Every indication we have is that they're prepared to go into Ukraine." Biden reiterated that path to diplomacy "is a way through this". Blinken said Russia should demonstrate its intentions "by sending your troops, your tanks, your planes, back to their barrack" and allow its diplomats to negotiate. Watch: Is Russia conducting a proxy war in Ukraine? Russia has repeatedly scoffed at reports that its forces are ready to invade Ukraine even as the US has said heavy artillery, tanks and thousands of troops are stationed at the border with Ukraine. Meanwhile, shelling was reported as exchanges of fire took place between Ukraine's forces and pro-Russian separatists Russia had submitted a security document to the United States and NATO stating that ex-Soviet states should not be inducted into the European military alliance referring to Ukraine, however, both NATO and the US have rejected Russia's direction. Also Read in Pics: Russia's next wonder weapon: Kedr intercontinental ballistic missile "In the absence of will on the American side to negotiate firm and legally binding guarantees on our security from the United States and its allies, Russia will be forced to respond, including with military-technical measures," the Russian foreign ministry said. Russia had announced earlier this week that its forces were returning to their permanent bases after drills in Belarus including those who had taken part in the Crimea military exercise. However, the US said it needs proof of Russian withdrawal. US officials say there are at least 150,000 Russian troops massed along the southern, eastern and northern borders of Ukraine. (With inputs from Agencies)

State plainly Russia will not invade Ukraine, US challenges Putin

As tensions continues between Ukraine and Russia, UK PM Boris Johnson took to China's social network site Sina Weibo to warn President Putin.

Johnson said Putin still has time to "step back". However, Chinese netizens were puzzled as some asked if Putin even had a Weibo account.

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/photos/ukraine-crisis-how-putin-built-russias-army-as-a-potent-force-453715">Also Read in Pics |&nbsp;Ukraine crisis: How Putin built Russia's Army as a potent force</a>

China's state-run Global Times reported that some netizens believed the UK prime minister was&nbsp;trying to "influence Chinese netizens". The Chinese daily said Johnson's post on Weibo received 32,000 comments and over 1.1 million likes.

The Russian embassy in China also did not take too kindly to the post calling it "absurd".

"This statement is designed to further inflame the hysteria surrounding the so-called imminent Russian invasion of Ukraine and is absurd," the Russian embassy said while blaming NATO for the escalation of tensions.

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/photos/skyfall-avangard-sarmat-russias-new-killer-superpower-weapons-revealed-448724">Watch:</a>&nbsp;Russia's claims of withdrawing troops 'false', says US

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In a phone call with United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, Johnson said there was "little evidence" of Russian troops pulling back from the border. The US said on Thursday that Russia had added 7,000 more troops along Ukraine's border.

Russia had said earlier this week that it was pulling back some troops from the border after drills with Belarus and on Wednesday it said troops were returning to the barracks after drills in Crimea.

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Tensions between Russia and Ukraine has been escalating for the past few weeks as the US has warned Putin's regime is ready to launch an attack on Kyiv with over 100,000 troops deployed along the border.

Russian officials including President Putin have&nbsp;dismissed reports, however, the Russian president has said his troops have the right to move around anywhere inside the country's territory.

(With inputs from Agencies)

As tensions continues between Ukraine and Russia, UK PM Boris Johnson took to China's social network site Sina Weibo to warn President Putin. Johnson said Putin still has time to "step back".

As tensions continues between Ukraine and Russia, UK PM Boris Johnson took to China's social network site Sina Weibo to warn President Putin. Johnson said Putin still has time to "step back". However, Chinese netizens were puzzled as some asked if Putin even had a Weibo account. Also Read in Pics | Ukraine crisis: How Putin built Russia's Army as a potent force China's state-run Global Times reported that some netizens believed the UK prime minister was trying to "influence Chinese netizens". The Chinese daily said Johnson's post on Weibo received 32,000 comments and over 1.1 million likes. The Russian embassy in China also did not take too kindly to the post calling it "absurd". "This statement is designed to further inflame the hysteria surrounding the so-called imminent Russian invasion of Ukraine and is absurd," the Russian embassy said while blaming NATO for the escalation of tensions. Watch: Russia's claims of withdrawing troops 'false', says US In a phone call with United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, Johnson said there was "little evidence" of Russian troops pulling back from the border. The US said on Thursday that Russia had added 7,000 more troops along Ukraine's border. Russia had said earlier this week that it was pulling back some troops from the border after drills with Belarus and on Wednesday it said troops were returning to the barracks after drills in Crimea. Also Read in Pics: Skyfall, Avangard, Sarmat: Russia's new killer 'superpower' weapons revealed Tensions between Russia and Ukraine has been escalating for the past few weeks as the US has warned Putin's regime is ready to launch an attack on Kyiv with over 100,000 troops deployed along the border. Russian officials including President Putin have dismissed reports, however, the Russian president has said his troops have the right to move around anywhere inside the country's territory. (With inputs from Agencies)

PM Johnson takes to Weibo to slam Putin; Chinese netizens, Russia slam move

As Russia said it was&nbsp;pulling back some troops, US President Joe Biden cautioned that an attack on Ukraine is "very much" possible.

The US president added that the pullback of Russian troops from Ukraine's border has "not yet verified" while adding that&nbsp;"analysts indicate that they remain very much in a threatening position."&nbsp;

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Biden said the United States is "ready to go" with large scale sanctions although he added that "we should give the diplomacy every chance to succeed."

Meanwhile, US secretary of state Anthony Blinken in a phone call to Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said there needs to be "verifiable, credible, meaningful de-escalation".

Watch:&nbsp;What will China do if Russia invades Ukraine?

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"While further Russian aggression against Ukraine would result in a swift, severe, and united Transatlantic response, we remain committed to the diplomatic path," Blinken told Lavrov as Russia announced on Tuesday that it was pulling back some troops after they finished the military drills.

The French president's office echoed the US thoughts as it added that de-escalation should be &nbsp;"verified and consolidated" while adding that &nbsp;"Russian military deployment remains very impressive".&nbsp;

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Meanwhile, reports said websites linked to Ukraine's defence ministry and armed forces came under cyber attack amid fears of a Russian invasion.

Ukraine's state bank sites were also hit by cyberattacks. The defence ministry site reportedly showed an error message showing "undergoing technical maintenance".

Ukraine's communications watchdog while pointing to Russia said: "It cannot be excluded that the aggressor is resorting to dirty tricks."

Ukraine was earlier hit by a cyberattack a month ago when some government sites had come under cyber attack. NATO had at the time announced a cyber warfare cooperation deal with Ukraine in response.

(With inputs from Agencies)

As Russia said it was pulling back some troops, US President Joe Biden cautioned that an attack on Ukraine is "very much" possible. The US president added that the pullback of Russian troops from Ukraine's border has "not yet verified" while adding that "analysts indicate that they remain very much in a threatening position.

As Russia said it was pulling back some troops, US President Joe Biden cautioned that an attack on Ukraine is "very much" possible. The US president added that the pullback of Russian troops from Ukraine's border has "not yet verified" while adding that "analysts indicate that they remain very much in a threatening position." Also Read in Pics: Skyfall, Avangard, Sarmat: Russia's new killer 'superpower' weapons revealed Biden said the United States is "ready to go" with large scale sanctions although he added that "we should give the diplomacy every chance to succeed." Meanwhile, US secretary of state Anthony Blinken in a phone call to Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said there needs to be "verifiable, credible, meaningful de-escalation". Watch: What will China do if Russia invades Ukraine? "While further Russian aggression against Ukraine would result in a swift, severe, and united Transatlantic response, we remain committed to the diplomatic path," Blinken told Lavrov as Russia announced on Tuesday that it was pulling back some troops after they finished the military drills. The French president's office echoed the US thoughts as it added that de-escalation should be "verified and consolidated" while adding that "Russian military deployment remains very impressive". Also Read in Pics: Target Ukraine: US F-35 vs Russian Air Force SU-57 jets, who wins? Meanwhile, reports said websites linked to Ukraine's defence ministry and armed forces came under cyber attack amid fears of a Russian invasion. Ukraine's state bank sites were also hit by cyberattacks. The defence ministry site reportedly showed an error message showing "undergoing technical maintenance". Ukraine's communications watchdog while pointing to Russia said: "It cannot be excluded that the aggressor is resorting to dirty tricks." Ukraine was earlier hit by a cyberattack a month ago when some government sites had come under cyber attack. NATO had at the time announced a cyber warfare cooperation deal with Ukraine in response. (With inputs from Agencies)

Russian attack on Ukraine still possible, warns Biden

Russia said today the United States and NATO had overlooked its concern over the security draft agreement submitted to it earlier amid tensions with Ukraine along the border.

Russia's foreign ministry spokesman Zaitsev said, "We have already repeatedly stated that our country does not intend to attack anyone," even as reports indicated Russia has massed over 100,000 troops along the Ukraine border.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov added that the country's "thoughts" have not been taken into account over the security agreement as the Biden administration rejected Russia's demand that former Soviet countries should not be inducted into NATO referring to Ukraine.

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"We cannot say that our thoughts have been taken into account or that a willingness has been shown to take our concerns into account," Kremlin said.

"Let's not rush into assessments; it takes time to analyse," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov added.

Watch:&nbsp;Ukraine, Russia crisis: Which side will India lean?

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Meanwhile, Germany and US warned that the gas pipeline which could double Russian natural gas supply to Germany could be in danger of not being implemented if Putin's regime attacked Ukraine.

"If Russia invades Ukraine, one way or another, Nord Stream 2 will not move forward, "Victoria Nuland, US undersecretary of state for political affairs said.

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/photos/why-russia-has-parked-iskander-m-missile-system-along-ukraine-448119">Also Read:&nbsp;Why Russia has parked Iskander-M missile system along Ukraine?</a>

The new German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is set to meet President Joe Biden next month to discuss the Ukraine crisis even as the US president spoke to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensk to step up economic support to the nation.

NATO has put 8,500 troops on alert amid tensions at the border. However, Russia has maintained it has the right to move troops anywhere inside its borders even as it has rejected claims of an imminent invasion.

(With inputs from Agencies)

Russia said today the United States and NATO had overlooked its concern over the security draft agreement submitted to it earlier amid tensions with Ukraine along the border.

Russia said today the United States and NATO had overlooked its concern over the security draft agreement submitted to it earlier amid tensions with Ukraine along the border. Russia's foreign ministry spokesman Zaitsev said, "We have already repeatedly stated that our country does not intend to attack anyone," even as reports indicated Russia has massed over 100,000 troops along the Ukraine border. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov added that the country's "thoughts" have not been taken into account over the security agreement as the Biden administration rejected Russia's demand that former Soviet countries should not be inducted into NATO referring to Ukraine. Also Read in Pics: Russia's 'Dagger' on Ukraine: Kinzhal hypersonic missiles can degrade high value targets "We cannot say that our thoughts have been taken into account or that a willingness has been shown to take our concerns into account," Kremlin said. "Let's not rush into assessments; it takes time to analyse," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov added. Watch: Ukraine, Russia crisis: Which side will India lean? Meanwhile, Germany and US warned that the gas pipeline which could double Russian natural gas supply to Germany could be in danger of not being implemented if Putin's regime attacked Ukraine. "If Russia invades Ukraine, one way or another, Nord Stream 2 will not move forward, "Victoria Nuland, US undersecretary of state for political affairs said. Also Read: Why Russia has parked Iskander-M missile system along Ukraine? The new German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is set to meet President Joe Biden next month to discuss the Ukraine crisis even as the US president spoke to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensk to step up economic support to the nation. NATO has put 8,500 troops on alert amid tensions at the border. However, Russia has maintained it has the right to move troops anywhere inside its borders even as it has rejected claims of an imminent invasion. (With inputs from Agencies)

If Russia invades Ukraine, Nord Stream 2 pipeline will not move forward: US

As Russia and Ukraine tensions at the border continue, US President Joe Biden said Putin "has to do something" while adding that "my guess is he will move in".

"What I'm concerned about is this could get out of hand, very easily get out of hand&nbsp;because of the borders of Ukraine and what Russia may or may not do," the US president&nbsp;said.

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/russia-could-potentially-attack-ukraine-from-belarus-us-state-department-official-445848">Also Read |&nbsp;Russia could potentially attack Ukraine from Belarus: US State Department official</a>

Biden expressed fears that if Russia attacked Ukraine there could be "short of a full-blown nuclear war".

"He's not in a very good position to dominate the world," Biden said referring to Putin. The US president added that a summit to defuse the Ukraine crisis could be a "possibility" while also warning of heavy human casualties in case of a war.

Watch:&nbsp;Ukraine on target of Russian nukes?

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Thousands of Russian troops have massed at the border worrying the US and Ukraine. Putin had dismissed reports that his troops are set to attack Ukraine asserting that soldiers can move around anywhere inside the border.

"It's one thing if it's a minor incursion, and then we end up having a fight about what to do and not do," Biden said.

However, the White House warned that Russia could launch an attack on Ukraine between mid-January and mid-February as&nbsp; 
White House press secretary Jen Psaki said an attack on Ukraine "will be met with a swift, severe, and united response from the United States and our allies."

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/russia-thins-out-its-embassy-in-ukraine-a-possible-clue-to-putins-next-move-445656">Also Read:&nbsp;Russia thins out its embassy in Ukraine, a possible clue to Putin’s next move</a>

"If they actually do what they're capable of doing with the force they've massed on the border, it is going to be a disaster for Russia," Biden said, adding that his administration was ready to impose "severe costs" and that there would be "significant damage" to the Russian economy.

(With inputs from Agencies)

As Russia and Ukraine tensions at the border continue, US President Joe Biden said Putin "has to do something" while adding that "my guess is he will move in". "What I'm concerned about is this could get out of hand, very easily get out of hand because of the borders of Ukraine and what Russia may or may not do," the US president said.

As Russia and Ukraine tensions at the border continue, US President Joe Biden said Putin "has to do something" while adding that "my guess is he will move in". "What I'm concerned about is this could get out of hand, very easily get out of hand because of the borders of Ukraine and what Russia may or may not do," the US president said. Also Read | Russia could potentially attack Ukraine from Belarus: US State Department official Biden expressed fears that if Russia attacked Ukraine there could be "short of a full-blown nuclear war". "He's not in a very good position to dominate the world," Biden said referring to Putin. The US president added that a summit to defuse the Ukraine crisis could be a "possibility" while also warning of heavy human casualties in case of a war. Watch: Ukraine on target of Russian nukes? Thousands of Russian troops have massed at the border worrying the US and Ukraine. Putin had dismissed reports that his troops are set to attack Ukraine asserting that soldiers can move around anywhere inside the border. "It's one thing if it's a minor incursion, and then we end up having a fight about what to do and not do," Biden said. However, the White House warned that Russia could launch an attack on Ukraine between mid-January and mid-February as White House press secretary Jen Psaki said an attack on Ukraine "will be met with a swift, severe, and united response from the United States and our allies." Also Read: Russia thins out its embassy in Ukraine, a possible clue to Putin’s next move "If they actually do what they're capable of doing with the force they've massed on the border, it is going to be a disaster for Russia," Biden said, adding that his administration was ready to impose "severe costs" and that there would be "significant damage" to the Russian economy. (With inputs from Agencies)

'Severe costs': My guess is he will move in, says Biden on Putin's Ukraine invasion plan

US President Biden's virtual summit with Russian President Putin over a video link lasted for two hours on Tuesday.

As the talks began, President Biden greeted the Russian president saying, "hopefully next time we meet in-person". "The last time we could not meet during G20," Biden added.

The US president spoke to Putin from the White House situation room as the Russian president connected from the Black Sea resort of Sochi. The meeting was held&nbsp;via a secure video link and was held privately.&nbsp;&nbsp;

The summit took&nbsp;place amid tensions in Ukraine with Russian troops reportedly amassed at the border.&nbsp;

The White House said President Biden will call US allies including Britain, France, Germany and Italy after talks with Putin.&nbsp;The White House added that the two leaders agreed to stay in close touch amid reports of Russian troop build-up along Ukraine's border.

Ahead of the talks, Kremlin had declared that it did not expect any breakthrough. The two leaders had earlier met in Geneva in a first in-person summit since Biden became the US president.

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President Putin has insisted NATO should guarantee it will not expand east to the Russian border even as Ukraine has repeatedly said over the past month that Russia has been deploying heavy armour along the border.

President Biden had earlier said that his administration is putting together a "comprehensive and meaningful set of initiatives" to ensure Putin's Russia does not "go ahead and do what people are worried he may do" referring to Russia's plan to invade Ukraine.

Putin has however denied his forces are set to attack Ukraine asserting that Russian troops can move about freely inside their territory as they wished.

However, western governments including US secretary of state Antony Blinken&nbsp;has&nbsp;spoken out against large scale troop movements while sending warnings to Kremlin.

(With inputs from Agencies)

US President Biden's virtual summit with Russian President Putin over a video link lasted for two hours on Tuesday. As the talks began, President Biden greeted the Russian president saying, "hopefully next time we meet in-person".

US President Biden's virtual summit with Russian President Putin over a video link lasted for two hours on Tuesday. As the talks began, President Biden greeted the Russian president saying, "hopefully next time we meet in-person". "The last time we could not meet during G20," Biden added. The US president spoke to Putin from the White House situation room as the Russian president connected from the Black Sea resort of Sochi. The meeting was held via a secure video link and was held privately. The summit took place amid tensions in Ukraine with Russian troops reportedly amassed at the border. The White House said President Biden will call US allies including Britain, France, Germany and Italy after talks with Putin. The White House added that the two leaders agreed to stay in close touch amid reports of Russian troop build-up along Ukraine's border. Ahead of the talks, Kremlin had declared that it did not expect any breakthrough. The two leaders had earlier met in Geneva in a first in-person summit since Biden became the US president. Also Read: Ahead of Biden-Putin virtual summit, Russia slams US move to boycott Beijing Winter Olympics President Putin has insisted NATO should guarantee it will not expand east to the Russian border even as Ukraine has repeatedly said over the past month that Russia has been deploying heavy armour along the border. President Biden had earlier said that his administration is putting together a "comprehensive and meaningful set of initiatives" to ensure Putin's Russia does not "go ahead and do what people are worried he may do" referring to Russia's plan to invade Ukraine. Putin has however denied his forces are set to attack Ukraine asserting that Russian troops can move about freely inside their territory as they wished. However, western governments including US secretary of state Antony Blinken has spoken out against large scale troop movements while sending warnings to Kremlin. (With inputs from Agencies)

Russian President Putin, US President Biden hold virtual summit

The Kremlin said on Friday that Russia and the United States had a tentative date and time for a video summit between Vladimir&nbsp;Putin&nbsp;and Joe Biden in the coming days, but that Moscow was waiting for Washington to finalise it.

Kremlin advisor Yuri Ushakov said&nbsp;Putin&nbsp;plans to tell Biden about a proposal for security guarantees that would halt the NATO military alliance's eastward expansion and end what Moscow describes as threatening weapons deployments to Russia's neighbours, including Ukraine.

"Given the tense situation, there is now an urgent need to provide us with appropriate guarantees. It simply cannot go on like this," Ushakov told reporters at a briefing.

The United States, its NATO allies and Ukraine accuse Moscow of massing troops near the Ukrainian border, and Kyiv says it fears Russia is planning an attack. Moscow denies plans to invade Ukraine, and accuses Kyiv of building up its own forces to attack territory held by pro-Russian separatists.

Russia has been pushing for top-level talks with the United States for weeks&nbsp;and has floated the idea of seeking legally-binding security guarantees from the West.

Ushakov repeated Russia's denials that it is being aggressive along the Ukrainian frontier.

"It's nonsense, there is no escalation," said Ushakov. "We have the right to move around troops on our own territory, there is absolutely no escalation (by us)."

Ushakov said any talks with Biden would take place after&nbsp;Putin&nbsp;travels to India next week.

"We have a concrete date and time for this video conference. I think it's better to wait for final agreement from the Americans. But this meeting in the format of a video conference is being fairly actively prepared," he said.

At the talks,&nbsp;Putin&nbsp;and Biden could also discuss agreements they reached at their first summit in Geneva in June, Ushakov said. Afghanistan, Iran, Libya, Syria and strategic stability might also be raised, he said.

The Kremlin said on Friday that Russia and the United States had a tentative date and time for a video summit between Vladimir Putin and Joe Biden in the coming days, but that Moscow was waiting for Washington to finalise it.

The Kremlin said on Friday that Russia and the United States had a tentative date and time for a video summit between Vladimir Putin and Joe Biden in the coming days, but that Moscow was waiting for Washington to finalise it. Kremlin advisor Yuri Ushakov said Putin plans to tell Biden about a proposal for security guarantees that would halt the NATO military alliance's eastward expansion and end what Moscow describes as threatening weapons deployments to Russia's neighbours, including Ukraine. "Given the tense situation, there is now an urgent need to provide us with appropriate guarantees. It simply cannot go on like this," Ushakov told reporters at a briefing. The United States, its NATO allies and Ukraine accuse Moscow of massing troops near the Ukrainian border, and Kyiv says it fears Russia is planning an attack. Moscow denies plans to invade Ukraine, and accuses Kyiv of building up its own forces to attack territory held by pro-Russian separatists. Russia has been pushing for top-level talks with the United States for weeks and has floated the idea of seeking legally-binding security guarantees from the West. Ushakov repeated Russia's denials that it is being aggressive along the Ukrainian frontier. "It's nonsense, there is no escalation," said Ushakov. "We have the right to move around troops on our own territory, there is absolutely no escalation (by us)." Ushakov said any talks with Biden would take place after Putin travels to India next week. "We have a concrete date and time for this video conference. I think it's better to wait for final agreement from the Americans. But this meeting in the format of a video conference is being fairly actively prepared," he said. At the talks, Putin and Biden could also discuss agreements they reached at their first summit in Geneva in June, Ushakov said. Afghanistan, Iran, Libya, Syria and strategic stability might also be raised, he said.

Putin, Joe Biden set to conduct video summit: Kremlin

President Joe Biden's first overseas trip put his diplomatic and negotiating philosophy on display, as he rallied traditional US democratic allies to confront new and old challenges and offered an often rosy take on the possibilities of cooperation with Russian President Vladimir Putin after a one-on-one summit. 
 
<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/highlights-will-not-tolerate-violence-of-democratic-sovereignty-biden-tells-putin-391919">Read: Blow-by-blow account of Putin-Biden summit</a>

Here are some key takeaways:

A reset they didn't call a reset

Biden and Putin did not use the word reset to describe the state of relations between the two nations after their summit in Switzerland.

But that's what the meeting amounted to, with both men staking out clear areas of disagreement, even as they pointed to smaller-scale areas where they could cooperate. 
 
<a href="https://www.wionews.com/photos/highlights-stone-face-rare-eye-contact-biden-and-putins-historic-summit-391948">Pictures: 'Stone face, rare eye contact'- Biden and Putin's historic summit</a>

They conveyed both mutual respect and mutual scepticism. It was an abrupt return to more conventional U.S.-Russia framing after the presidency of Donald Trump, who often seemed to elevate Putin and create at least the aspiration that the countries could be more like partners.

This time, each leader left with the understanding that some of the old rules still apply. Russia returns to its place as a worthy adversary," as Biden put it, rather than some kind of colleague. And the longer-standing tensions, over cyber warfare and human rights, remain.

The art of the face 
 
After their three-hour meeting, Biden's sunny disposition stood in sharp contrast to the more sober, taciturn tone of Putin, who at times became defensive when asked questions by reporters about human rights violations in Russia and the country's invasion of Ukraine.

Even so, Biden acknowledged his optimism was more wishful thinking than reality.

I'm going to drive you all crazy because I know you want me to always put a negative thrust on things, particularly in public, he said shortly before boarding Air Force One, adding, that way, you guarantee nothing happens.

It highlighted the president's negotiating style, whether it be with Putin or with Senate Republicans at home on infrastructure in which he publicly expresses his belief that a deal can be struck despite often overwhelming odds.

I know we make foreign policy out to be this great, great skill that somehow is sort of like a secret code," Biden said. "All foreign policy is a logical extension of personal relationships. It's the way human nature functions."

He later added, There's a value to being realistic and to put on an optimistic front, an optimistic face." 
 
.... And the face-to-face 
 
Biden's eight-day, three-country foreign trip demonstrated his emphasis on personal relationships above all.

There's no substitute, as those of you who have covered me for a while now, for face-to-face dialogue between leaders. None, Biden said, declaring his summit with Putin a success simply for the fact that they spoke in person.

Throughout his trip, most of Biden's meetings were conducted in private, without cameras, or with only a few moments open to media.

It highlighted Biden's faith in intangible personal ties that can drive policy outcomes, both foreign and domestic.

And it marked a clear departure in style from Trump, whose freewheeling public meetings with global leaders became something of a legend on the international stage. Relationships tended to flow one way with obsequious public displays by heads of state and government trying to get on Trump's good side.

Biden is banking that those leaders will welcome a return to the old school approach.

With a little help from my friends 
 
Before leaving Washington, Biden reasserted his view that democracies are in a generational confrontation with autocratic governments and that the U.S. can't hope to prevail if it stands alone.

With that in mind, he rallied American allies at the Group of Seven meetings of wealthy democracies and treaty partners at NATO, before his sit-down with Putin.

The sequencing was as much strategy as it was symbolism, with the unified-front posture with allies meant to bolster Biden's position regarding Russia. It also drove momentum behind the U.S.' ongoing showdown with China over trade, security and health policy, as Biden secured tough language on China, both in the G-7 leaders' communique and from NATO countries in their joint statement.

Mad, but don't call it a new cold war 
 
In the wake of a series of disruptive cyberattacks that have emanated from Russia, Biden pressed Putin to curtail criminal and state-sponsored activity from his country by warning of American digital firepower and his willingness to deploy it.

Saying he gave Putin a list of 16 critical infrastructure" sectors, from the energy industry to water systems, Biden said the leaders agreed to task experts to work on specific understandings about what's off-limits in this new domain.

Even as Biden said of Putin, I think that the last thing he wants now is a Cold War, the American president embraced a defining characteristic of that era: deterrence.

Biden said he broached with Putin and his top advisers the possibility of a cyberattack taking down one of their oil pipelines and the devastating impact it could have on their energy-dependent economy.

Biden said Putin was well aware that the US&nbsp;has the significant cyber capability. He doesn't know exactly what it is, but it's significant, and if in fact, they violate these basic norms, we will respond, he knows, in a cyber way.

Domestic tensions cloud global talks 
 
After four years of America First under Trump, Biden set out to show the world that America is back, but lingering domestic instability cast a long shadow overseas.

Whether it be the last president's temperament and isolationist policies or the months of efforts to undermine the 2020 election and the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection, the tumult of the last four years remains a fresh and raw memory for allies and adversaries alike.

Biden's actions and public comments showed the lengths to which he felt he needed to go to reassure allies that the U.S. could be a credible leader on the world stage.

They have seen things happen, as we have, that shocked them and surprised them, Biden said Monday of American allies. But I think they like I do, believe the American people are not going to sustain that kind of behaviour.

Even if allies were convinced, it was clear that adversaries were unwilling to forget so soon.

In his news conference following his meeting with Biden, Putin repeatedly deflected from his own deadly crackdowns on political dissenters with familiar but now more potent whataboutisms, by pointing to the Capitol assault and Black Lives Matter protests against racial injustice and police brutality in the U.S. last year.

Biden called it a ridiculous comparison, though it was clear some damage couldn't be swiftly undone.

President Joe Biden's first overseas trip put his diplomatic and negotiating philosophy on display, as he rallied traditional US democratic allies to confront new and old challenges and offered an often rosy take on the possibilities of cooperation with Russian President Vladimir Putin after a one-on-one summit.

President Joe Biden's first overseas trip put his diplomatic and negotiating philosophy on display, as he rallied traditional US democratic allies to confront new and old challenges and offered an often rosy take on the possibilities of cooperation with Russian President Vladimir Putin after a one-on-one summit. Read: Blow-by-blow account of Putin-Biden summit Here are some key takeaways: A reset they didn't call a reset Biden and Putin did not use the word reset to describe the state of relations between the two nations after their summit in Switzerland. But that's what the meeting amounted to, with both men staking out clear areas of disagreement, even as they pointed to smaller-scale areas where they could cooperate. Pictures: 'Stone face, rare eye contact'- Biden and Putin's historic summit They conveyed both mutual respect and mutual scepticism. It was an abrupt return to more conventional U.S.-Russia framing after the presidency of Donald Trump, who often seemed to elevate Putin and create at least the aspiration that the countries could be more like partners. This time, each leader left with the understanding that some of the old rules still apply. Russia returns to its place as a worthy adversary," as Biden put it, rather than some kind of colleague. And the longer-standing tensions, over cyber warfare and human rights, remain. The art of the face After their three-hour meeting, Biden's sunny disposition stood in sharp contrast to the more sober, taciturn tone of Putin, who at times became defensive when asked questions by reporters about human rights violations in Russia and the country's invasion of Ukraine. Even so, Biden acknowledged his optimism was more wishful thinking than reality. I'm going to drive you all crazy because I know you want me to always put a negative thrust on things, particularly in public, he said shortly before boarding Air Force One, adding, that way, you guarantee nothing happens. It highlighted the president's negotiating style, whether it be with Putin or with Senate Republicans at home on infrastructure in which he publicly expresses his belief that a deal can be struck despite often overwhelming odds. I know we make foreign policy out to be this great, great skill that somehow is sort of like a secret code," Biden said. "All foreign policy is a logical extension of personal relationships. It's the way human nature functions." He later added, There's a value to being realistic and to put on an optimistic front, an optimistic face." .... And the face-to-face Biden's eight-day, three-country foreign trip demonstrated his emphasis on personal relationships above all. There's no substitute, as those of you who have covered me for a while now, for face-to-face dialogue between leaders. None, Biden said, declaring his summit with Putin a success simply for the fact that they spoke in person. Throughout his trip, most of Biden's meetings were conducted in private, without cameras, or with only a few moments open to media. It highlighted Biden's faith in intangible personal ties that can drive policy outcomes, both foreign and domestic. And it marked a clear departure in style from Trump, whose freewheeling public meetings with global leaders became something of a legend on the international stage. Relationships tended to flow one way with obsequious public displays by heads of state and government trying to get on Trump's good side. Biden is banking that those leaders will welcome a return to the old school approach. With a little help from my friends Before leaving Washington, Biden reasserted his view that democracies are in a generational confrontation with autocratic governments and that the U.S. can't hope to prevail if it stands alone. With that in mind, he rallied American allies at the Group of Seven meetings of wealthy democracies and treaty partners at NATO, before his sit-down with Putin. The sequencing was as much strategy as it was symbolism, with the unified-front posture with allies meant to bolster Biden's position regarding Russia. It also drove momentum behind the U.S.' ongoing showdown with China over trade, security and health policy, as Biden secured tough language on China, both in the G-7 leaders' communique and from NATO countries in their joint statement. Mad, but don't call it a new cold war In the wake of a series of disruptive cyberattacks that have emanated from Russia, Biden pressed Putin to curtail criminal and state-sponsored activity from his country by warning of American digital firepower and his willingness to deploy it. Saying he gave Putin a list of 16 critical infrastructure" sectors, from the energy industry to water systems, Biden said the leaders agreed to task experts to work on specific understandings about what's off-limits in this new domain. Even as Biden said of Putin, I think that the last thing he wants now is a Cold War, the American president embraced a defining characteristic of that era: deterrence. Biden said he broached with Putin and his top advisers the possibility of a cyberattack taking down one of their oil pipelines and the devastating impact it could have on their energy-dependent economy. Biden said Putin was well aware that the US has the significant cyber capability. He doesn't know exactly what it is, but it's significant, and if in fact, they violate these basic norms, we will respond, he knows, in a cyber way. Domestic tensions cloud global talks After four years of America First under Trump, Biden set out to show the world that America is back, but lingering domestic instability cast a long shadow overseas. Whether it be the last president's temperament and isolationist policies or the months of efforts to undermine the 2020 election and the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection, the tumult of the last four years remains a fresh and raw memory for allies and adversaries alike. Biden's actions and public comments showed the lengths to which he felt he needed to go to reassure allies that the U.S. could be a credible leader on the world stage. They have seen things happen, as we have, that shocked them and surprised them, Biden said Monday of American allies. But I think they like I do, believe the American people are not going to sustain that kind of behaviour. Even if allies were convinced, it was clear that adversaries were unwilling to forget so soon. In his news conference following his meeting with Biden, Putin repeatedly deflected from his own deadly crackdowns on political dissenters with familiar but now more potent whataboutisms, by pointing to the Capitol assault and Black Lives Matter protests against racial injustice and police brutality in the U.S. last year. Biden called it a ridiculous comparison, though it was clear some damage couldn't be swiftly undone.

Biden-Putin summit takeaways: Respect, optimism, and some scepticism

US President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin met at Geneva for the much-awaited summit talks on Wednesday.&nbsp;

Watch:

<div class="videoWrapper trancodeVideo"><iframe allowfullscreen="" autoplay="1" class="includeVideo" frameborder="0" height="350" src="https://www.wionews.com/videos/putin-calls-discussions-with-biden-fruitful-constructive-during-post-summit-press-conference-392034/embed" style="width:100%;max-width:560px;" width="560"></iframe></div>

After meeting for over three and half hours, the two leaders addressed a press conference separately.

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/highlights-will-not-tolerate-violence-of-democratic-sovereignty-biden-tells-putin-391919">Read: Blow-by-blow account of Putin-Biden summit</a>

The Russian president was the first to address reporters as he informed that a possible prisoner swap with the US was likely&nbsp;and it was discussed with President Biden and that "compromises" may be possible.

The Russian president informed that the two leaders had agreed their ambassadors should return to their respective positions in each other's capital although he added that the timeline is yet to be decided.

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/photos/highlights-stone-face-rare-eye-contact-biden-and-putins-historic-summit-391948">Pics: 'Stone face, rare eye contact'- Biden and Putin's historic summit</a>

Putin said Russia and the US had agreed to "consultations on cybersecurity".

"Russia faces the same cyberthreats as the US, including attacks on the Russian healthcare system," Putin said.

However, Biden told the Russian president that critical infrastructure must be "off-limits" to cyberattacks.

On the question of trade relations, Putin said "all depends on the US, we did not introduce restrictions."

The Russian president compared Russia's jailing of political opponents to the arrests of rioters during the US capitol January 6 attacks.

On the question of human rights, Putin brought up Iraq, Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, gun violence as "evidence" of US human rights failures.

"In American cities, people are killed every day. Let’s talk about Afghanistan - one bombing and 120 people are killed, clearly civilians," the Russian president told reporters.

“Who bears responsibility for this, who’s the killer?”

On Russian opposition leader Navalny, Putin said: "Navalny knew he was violating the law when he did not report about his whereabouts as he returned to Russia after treatment."

"Navalny came back to Russia because he wanted to break the law, so what discussion should we have?"

Biden while addressing reporters said he told the Russian president that he will "not tolerate" interference&nbsp;in US democracy while declaring that the "last thing he wants now is a Cold War".

The US President said Putin had made "ridiculous" comparisons on human rights.

Biden reacted sharply to Putin's remark on the US Capitol riots on January 6, saying: "That's a ridiculous comparison. It's one thing for literally criminals to break through a cordon, go into the Capitol, kill a police officer and be held accountable, than it is for people objecting, marching on the Capitol and saying you are not allowing me to speak freely."

US President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin met at Geneva for the much-awaited summit talks on Wednesday. Watch: After meeting for over three and half hours, the two leaders addressed a press conference separately.

US President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin met at Geneva for the much-awaited summit talks on Wednesday. Watch: After meeting for over three and half hours, the two leaders addressed a press conference separately. Read: Blow-by-blow account of Putin-Biden summit The Russian president was the first to address reporters as he informed that a possible prisoner swap with the US was likely and it was discussed with President Biden and that "compromises" may be possible. The Russian president informed that the two leaders had agreed their ambassadors should return to their respective positions in each other's capital although he added that the timeline is yet to be decided. Pics: 'Stone face, rare eye contact'- Biden and Putin's historic summit Putin said Russia and the US had agreed to "consultations on cybersecurity". "Russia faces the same cyberthreats as the US, including attacks on the Russian healthcare system," Putin said. However, Biden told the Russian president that critical infrastructure must be "off-limits" to cyberattacks. On the question of trade relations, Putin said "all depends on the US, we did not introduce restrictions." The Russian president compared Russia's jailing of political opponents to the arrests of rioters during the US capitol January 6 attacks. On the question of human rights, Putin brought up Iraq, Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, gun violence as "evidence" of US human rights failures. "In American cities, people are killed every day. Let’s talk about Afghanistan - one bombing and 120 people are killed, clearly civilians," the Russian president told reporters. “Who bears responsibility for this, who’s the killer?” On Russian opposition leader Navalny, Putin said: "Navalny knew he was violating the law when he did not report about his whereabouts as he returned to Russia after treatment." "Navalny came back to Russia because he wanted to break the law, so what discussion should we have?" Biden while addressing reporters said he told the Russian president that he will "not tolerate" interference in US democracy while declaring that the "last thing he wants now is a Cold War". The US President said Putin had made "ridiculous" comparisons on human rights. Biden reacted sharply to Putin's remark on the US Capitol riots on January 6, saying: "That's a ridiculous comparison. It's one thing for literally criminals to break through a cordon, go into the Capitol, kill a police officer and be held accountable, than it is for people objecting, marching on the Capitol and saying you are not allowing me to speak freely."

Biden discusses human rights, cyberattacks with Putin in Geneva

US President Joe Biden arrived in Geneva on Tuesday ahead of his long-awaited summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

"I'm always ready," Biden said as he touched down in the Swiss city with&nbsp;the two leaders set to meet at a villa complex in Geneva on Wednesday.

Watch:

<div class="videoWrapper trancodeVideo"><iframe allowfullscreen="" autoplay="1" class="includeVideo" frameborder="0" height="350" src="https://www.wionews.com/videos/gravitas-5-us-russia-presidential-meetings-that-shaped-history-391734/embed" style="width:100%;max-width:560px;" width="560"></iframe></div>

Biden is set to discuss a series of controversial issues including alleged cyberattacks on US entities, the reported Russian meddling in US elections, aggression against Ukraine, the Navalny row, among others.

Biden proposed the summit in April, however, Kremlin had downplayed expectations as it announced the summit between the two world leaders.

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/photos/no-vladimir-youre-cold-blooded-said-a-us-president-391713">In Pics:&nbsp;No, Vladimir, you're cold-blooded, said a US president</a>

Biden flew to Geneva after his high profile meeting with the G7 leaders and NATO meetings. There will be no joint press conferences between Putin and Biden which had taken place earlier when Trump had met the Russian leader.

Russia and US relations have hit new lows in recent years with the former Trump administration imposing sanctions on Russia and lack of progress of arms control.

The talks between Biden and Putin at the La Grange villa are expected to start at around 1:00 pm(local time) (1100 GMT) and is set to last for hours with heavy security deployment at the Swiss lakeside city.

The two leaders are not expected to share meals and will hold&nbsp;separate news conferences, according to reports.

Biden and Putin and Putin will be accompanied by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov.

(With inputs from Agencies) 
&nbsp;

US President Joe Biden arrived in Geneva on Tuesday ahead of his long-awaited summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin. "I'm always ready," Biden said as he touched down in the Swiss city with the two leaders set to meet at a villa complex in Geneva on Wednesday.

US President Joe Biden arrived in Geneva on Tuesday ahead of his long-awaited summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin. "I'm always ready," Biden said as he touched down in the Swiss city with the two leaders set to meet at a villa complex in Geneva on Wednesday. Watch: Biden is set to discuss a series of controversial issues including alleged cyberattacks on US entities, the reported Russian meddling in US elections, aggression against Ukraine, the Navalny row, among others. Biden proposed the summit in April, however, Kremlin had downplayed expectations as it announced the summit between the two world leaders. In Pics: No, Vladimir, you're cold-blooded, said a US president Biden flew to Geneva after his high profile meeting with the G7 leaders and NATO meetings. There will be no joint press conferences between Putin and Biden which had taken place earlier when Trump had met the Russian leader. Russia and US relations have hit new lows in recent years with the former Trump administration imposing sanctions on Russia and lack of progress of arms control. The talks between Biden and Putin at the La Grange villa are expected to start at around 1:00 pm(local time) (1100 GMT) and is set to last for hours with heavy security deployment at the Swiss lakeside city. The two leaders are not expected to share meals and will hold separate news conferences, according to reports. Biden and Putin and Putin will be accompanied by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov. (With inputs from Agencies)

'I'm always ready': Biden arrives in Geneva ahead of summit with Putin

US President met Russian President Vladimir <a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/always-better-to-meet-face-to-face-biden-tells-putin-at-geneva-summit-391892">Putin</a> as the two world leaders sat down to hold lengthy discussions on a range of issues on Wednesday at the picturesque villa in Geneva.

Watch:

<div class="videoWrapper trancodeVideo"><iframe allowfullscreen="" autoplay="1" class="includeVideo" frameborder="0" height="350" src="https://www.wionews.com/videos/biden-putin-face-off-in-villa-la-grange-in-geneva-391917/embed" style="width:100%;max-width:560px;" width="560"></iframe></div>

Biden set the tone of the meeting, saying: "We try to determine where we have mutual interests and cooperate and where we don't, establish a predictable and rational way in which we disagree."

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/live-blog-us-president-joe-biden-russian-president-vladimir-putin-hold-historic-summit-in-geneva-391919">Biden-Putin summit updates</a>

Both leaders looked ready and relaxed to discuss matters as the summit&nbsp;began with Putin asserting that issues needed to be discussed while hoping for a "productive" meeting.

"I know that you have been on a long trip and had a lot of work, still the US-Russian relations have a lot of issues accumulated that require meetings at the highest level," Putin told Biden as both leaders shook hands to start the meeting.

<img alt="Biden-Putin" data-entity-type="file" data-entity-uuid="79d461f5-4a60-4e69-b7f5-deca7e7e0ca5" src="//cdn.wionews.com/sites/default/files/inline-images/9_0.jpg" />

Putin arrived directly for the meeting amid tight security as his motorcade made its way through the Swiss city. The US president had arrived a day earlier for the summit.

"I'm not looking for conflict," Biden had said earlier, while adding,"we will respond if Russia continues its harmful activities".

US President met Russian President Vladimir Putin as the two world leaders sat down to hold lengthy discussions on a range of issues on Wednesday at the picturesque villa in Geneva.

US President met Russian President Vladimir Putin as the two world leaders sat down to hold lengthy discussions on a range of issues on Wednesday at the picturesque villa in Geneva. Watch: Biden set the tone of the meeting, saying: "We try to determine where we have mutual interests and cooperate and where we don't, establish a predictable and rational way in which we disagree." Biden-Putin summit updates Both leaders looked ready and relaxed to discuss matters as the summit began with Putin asserting that issues needed to be discussed while hoping for a "productive" meeting. "I know that you have been on a long trip and had a lot of work, still the US-Russian relations have a lot of issues accumulated that require meetings at the highest level," Putin told Biden as both leaders shook hands to start the meeting. Putin arrived directly for the meeting amid tight security as his motorcade made its way through the Swiss city. The US president had arrived a day earlier for the summit. "I'm not looking for conflict," Biden had said earlier, while adding,"we will respond if Russia continues its harmful activities".

Biden seeks 'mutual interests' & 'rational way' with Putin

No, Vladimir, you're cold-blooded, said a US president

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