Ukraine holds late Friday talks with US, Germany, EU amid new risks of Russian invasion

Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba has held a set of phone calls with Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, German MFA head Annalena Baerbock, and EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell.

The talks took place amid the US has warned of the “very distinct possibility” of a Russian invasion of Ukraine in the next few days, potentially involving an overwhelming attack on Kyiv, and told all remaining Americans to leave the country in the next 48 hours. New US intelligence suggests Russia could intend to attack Ukraine before the end of the Olympics (February 20). The White House believes air attacks are likely first.

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The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly, said a small number of U.S. diplomats may be relocated to Ukraine’s far west, near the border with Poland, a NATO ally, so the U.S. could retain a diplomatic presence in the country, AP news reported. The Kremlin says response to its demands shows “disrespect.”

The Israeli Foreign Ministry has announced that it is evacuating the families of its diplomats from Ukraine. At the same time, Latvia, Norway, Japan, South Korea, Montenegro, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the United States called on their citizens to “leave Ukraine immediately.”

As reported yesterday, new Russian border deployments were detected by satellite. Find more details and photos here.

NATO is considering the long-term deployment of battlegroups, such as those already in place in the Baltic States and Poland, in the Black Sea region, including Romania, as NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg noted.

Read also: Budapest sees no Russian threat of invasion into Ukraine, refuses to deploy additional NATO troops in Hungary

“This is probably the most dangerous moment, I would say, in the course of the next few days, in what is the biggest security crisis that Europe has faced for decades, and we’ve got to get it right,” British PM Boris Johnson told.