AMN/ WEB DESK
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said the imminent threat of Russian military action in Ukraine justifies evacuating the US embassy in Kyiv.
His words came after Ukraine’s president urged calm, saying the biggest enemy was panic.More than a dozen countries have urged their citizens to leave Ukraine.Moscow, with more than 100,000 troops near the border, has denied it plans to invade.
The Kremlin’s top foreign policy advisor, Yuri Ushakov, has dismissed US warnings of an attack, saying hysteria has reached its peak.
The crisis comes eight years after Russia annexed Ukraine’s southern Crimea peninsula. Since then, Ukraine’s military has been locked in a war with Russian-backed rebels in eastern areas near Russia’s borders.
Saturday saw further attempts to de-escalate tensions in the region. In a phone call, President Joe Biden warned Russian leader Vladimir Putin of swift and severe costs if Russia sends in troops.
The UK, US and Germany are among several countries who have urged their nationals to get out of Ukraine immediately. The US decision to evacuate most of its embassy staff in Kyiv was followed by similar moves by Canada and Australia. All three nations have instead shifted operations to the western city of Lviv, near the Polish border, although the UK ambassador has said she will stay in the Ukrainian capital with a core team.
Mr Blinken said the risk of military action was high enough and the threat is imminent enough that the evacuation was the prudent thing to do.
But earlier Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had urged calm, saying, right now, the people’s biggest enemy is panic. Mr Zelensky said that if Western powers had any firm evidence of an impending invasion, he had yet to see it.