The State Department has ordered families of U.S embassy employees in Kyiv, Ukraine, to leave and authorized some U.S. government employees to depart due to the potential of Russian military action.
Russian military action anywhere in Ukraine would severely impact the embassy’s ability to provide consular services, including assistance to U.S. citizens in departing Ukraine, a State Department official told reporters on Sunday night. The State Department is urging those who can depart to do so on commercially-available flights.
The decisions were made out of an abundance of caution due to Russia’s continued military buildup and disinformation campaigns, a separate senior State Department official said.
The State Department does not have a “solid number” of how many Americans are in Ukraine, according to the official, because no one is required to register with the embassy while there.
Russia has amassed over 100,000 troops on Ukraine’s border, and although the U.S. does not know if Russian President Vladimir Putin has made a decision to invade or if a decision is imminent, he has built the military capacity to invade at any point, one of the officials said.
The concern has grown because of Russian forces entering Belarus, just north of Ukraine, to conduct joint military exercises, according to the Russian Ministry of Defense.
If Russia chooses to engage in further military aggression. It has the opportunity to launch the attack from different directions based on where it can launch these incursions against Ukraine.
The State Department’s travel advisory to Ukraine was already at a level four, the highest level, because of COVID-19, but the advisory was updated to urge citizens not to travel to the country over concerns of the potential of a significant Russian military action against Ukraine.
If an incursion were to occur, the security conditions along occupied Crimea and eastern Ukraine are unpredictable and could deteriorate at any moment, according to the official.
Though Crimea and the eastern parts of Ukraine are of particular concern, Russian military action anywhere in Ukraine would severely impact the embassy’s ability to provide services.
The U.S. last month authorized an additional $200 million in defensive aid, and the first shipment which contains lethal aid for the Ukraine defensive forces arrived in Kyiv on Saturday.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told “Face the Nation” on Sunday that there will be “massive consequences” for Russia if its military forces invade Ukraine.
“Russia will make its decisions based on President [Vladimir] Putin’s calculus of what’s in their interest,” Blinken said. “We are working very hard to affect that calculus, both in terms of offering a diplomatic path forward that could enhance collective security for all of us and equally a path of defense and deterrence, that makes very clear that if there’s aggression, there’ll be massive consequences. So the choice is his.”
President Biden last week said it was his “guess” that Russia would invade Ukraine, and the White House sought to walk back comments he made at a press conference Wednesday that suggested there could be divisions among Western nations about the consequences Russia could face if it launched a “minor incursion” into Ukrainian territory.
