White House: Russia Might Invade Ukraine "As Soon As Tomorrow"
Here we go again... just days after the White House was forced to
awkwardly walk (
https://bit.ly/3uwBHiY) back its prior assessment
that a Russian invasion of Ukraine was "imminent" - Biden's
national security adviser Jake Sullivan said while making the
rounds on Sunday news shows that the invasion will come "any
day now" - or even as soon as "tomorrow".
"Fox News Sunday" host Martha MacCallum asked Sullivan about
the White House's assessment of Russia's troop build-up, to which
he began in response (
https://bit.ly/3gq2HbX): "Well, what I can tell
you Martha is that we are in the window. Any day now, Russia could
take military action against Ukraine or it could be a couple of weeks
from now or Russia could choose to take the diplomatic path instead."
"The key thing is that the United States needs to be and is prepared
for any of those contingencies in lockstep with our allies and
partners," Sullivan continued. He further explained that the US had
already informed allies of the near-term possibility of war breaking
out.
"If war breaks out it will come at an enormous human cost to Ukraine,
but we believe that based on our preparations and our response, it
will come at a strategic cost to Russia as well," he said.
Elsewhere on Sunday, while speaking to ABC's This Week
(
https://abcn.ws/3BbI24Y), Sullivan got even more alarmist in his
predictions. He started by repeating that President Vladimir Putin
"has put himself in a position with military deployments to be able
to act aggressively against Ukraine at any time now." And that's
when he said there could be an invasion "tomorrow"...
The Kremlin rejected the fresh statements and media reports from
this weekend predicting Russia will invade soon as "madness and
scaremongering." (
https://youtu.be/UQsX996UkEk)
It was only last Wednesday that the White House walked back its
prior consistent assertions that a Russian invasion of Ukraine was
"imminent" (
https://bit.ly/3usvSDn).
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki had explained at the time:
"I used it once. I think others have used that once, and we stopped
using it because I think it sent a message that we weren't intending
to send, which was that we knew that President Putin had made
a decision."
I would say the vast majority of times I've talked about it, I've said
he could invade at any time," she added, trying to obfuscate her
own unambiguous prior messaging.
Sullivan's latest words on the Sunday shows suggests the White
House still can't get its own messaging straight. And certainly it's
not on board with its own allies like Ukraine, which has lately said
the situation is not as dire as the US is painting it.
