President Joe Biden will convene a meeting of the National Security Council on Sunday due to the rapidly worsening security conditions in Ukraine.
In a statement Saturday evening, the White House press secretary said that the president was receiving regular updates about events on the ground, and that his national security team hadaffirmed that Russia could launch an attack against Ukraine at any time.
In a Friday address, Biden said the U.S. believes that Russian President Vladimir Putin will launch an attack on Ukraine in the coming days.
In his second address in a week, Biden said that the Russian forces were planning to attackUkraine in the coming week.
Even as Russia has deployed nearly half of its military to Ukraine's northern and eastern flank, the Biden administration has refused to predict Putin's plan.
More than 150,000 Russian troops with advanced military equipment are not preparing for an invasion, according to the Kremlin.
Biden said there was still time for Putin to choose a path of diplomacy.
The nation's top diplomat said on Sunday that the U.S. and its allies are hopeful for a resolution to the crisis that does not lead to war.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that until the tanks are rolling and the planes are in the air, they will try to get President Putin to reverse his decision.
There is still time for him to pull back, and he will meet with his Russian counterpart in the coming week.
Service members of the Ukrainian Armed Forces drive a tank during military exercises in Kharkiv region, Ukraine February 10, 2022.Last week, Blinken made a dramatic appearance at the United Nations to share a grim assessment of what Russian forces could do to Ukraine if the Kremlin suddenly launched an attack.
Russian missiles and bombs will be dropped across Ukraine. Ukrainian institutions will be shut down by cyberattacks. Russian tanks and soldiers will advance on key targets that have already been identified and mapped out in detailed plans after that, he told the U.N. Security Council.
The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff told reporters at the Pentagon that Russia's posture along the Ukrainian border was unlike anything he had seen before.
The Russians have deployed air forces, naval forces, special forces, cyber electronic warfare, command and control, logistics engineers and other capabilities along the Ukrainian border.
The ground maneuver forces, the air forces, the missiles, and the other forces are all packaged together. Milley said on January 28 that it would result in a significant amount of casualties if that was unleashed on Ukraine.
It would be terrible, he said.
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