Russia expels America's second-most senior diplomat in Moscow in what the US views as an 'escalatory' move, the State Department says. Follow live updates:
Biden administration believes Russia may use UNSC meeting as part of a pretext for a potential invasionThe Biden administration believes that Russia could try to usetoday “as part of an attempt to establish a pretext for a potential invasion,” said a senior administration official, adding that Russia circulated a document with false claims last night to the countries in the UNSC.
“Earlier this week, President Putin without any factual basis accused Ukraine of committing genocide in eastern Ukraine. And last night, the Russian Mission to the United Nations circulated to the members of the Security Council, a document it calls ‘a joint project of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation and RT news channel,’ which alleges that war crimes have been committed in the course of the armed conflict in southeastern Ukraine.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken decided overnight to attend the meeting, after a series of meetings between the White House, the State Department and the National Security Council, the US Ambassador to the UN said Thursday morning. When asked about the reports of shelling in the Donbas overnight the official said they were “hesitant to speak to any particular new fact that has come in in just the last few hours” but pointed to the wide-ranging false comments from Russia in recent days.
The official also said that: “What we have been saying now for a number of weeks is that we have indications that Russia could launch a false pretext at any moment to help justify an invasion of Ukraine. And that pretext could take a number of different forms. It could be a provocation in the Donbas. It could be a claim about NATO activity. It could be a claim of an incursion into Russian territory.
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