Russian President Vladimir Putin has been keeping President Joe Biden guessing for months about what his next move will be regarding Ukraine.
Biden’s strategy to prevent Putin’s military buildup around Ukraine and a potential invasion has been to share U.S. intelligence with the public. The Biden administration offered Feb 16 as the possible invasion date, which proved to be incorrect.
When pressed by reports about the incorrect date, U.S. officials said that even though that date came and went we are still “in the window” of a potential invasion. Many of Biden’s critics argue that his strategy does not take into account Putin’s own agency and knowledge that Russian military communications are not secure.
“Too much is made of the question will Putin go or not,” a NATO official in Brussels, who had been briefed by the U.S., told Vice. “Everyone could see he was willing and ready to go and the Russian army doesn’t have particularly secure comms, so people were listening.”
“Putin has a chance to blame the hysterical West and announce he got what he wanted without taking on new sanctions. And maybe it unnerved him that the Americans released the intelligence on him. Or he didn’t care. But it’s impossible to say right now that the crisis has ended,” the official added.
Perhaps that was Putin’s strategy was when he officially recognized two separatist groups in eastern Ukraine as independent states. On Monday evening he ordered “peacekeeper” troops in the separatist-controlled territories.
Former CIA Director John McLaughlin said Putin was challenging whether the U.S. and NATO have a united definition of what constitutes an “invasion” of Ukraine.
“Putin has choreographed this with the hope that we and the Europeans will debate whether this is an ‘invasion’ or not. And hoping that throws us enough off-balance that he will pay a minimal price for this first slice of salami,” he wrote.
Germany suspended the certification of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline Tuesday but Biden has not acted on the sanctions that he threatened in the event of a Russian invasion.
Both Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill demanded Biden take economic action Tuesday, with Republican South Carolina Sen. Lindsay Graham saying the move “should immediately be met with forceful sanctions to destroy the ruble and crush the Russian oil and gas sector.”
Biden’s fellow Democrats called on him to take action as well, with Democratic Delaware Sen. Chris Coons saying the time for sanctions “starts now.”
“To be clear, if any additional Russian troops or proxy forces cross into Donbas, the Biden administration and our European allies must not hesitate in imposing crushing sanctions,” Democratic New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez said in a statement.
