White House reluctant to define Russian 'invasion', hints at possible Biden-Putin summit

WASHINGTON: US response to Russian troops entering the Donbas region has been termed weak.
The White House has not ruled out a summit between US president Joe Biden and Russian president Vladimir Putin even in the aftermath of Russian troops entering the rebel-held territories of Donetsk and Luhansk in Ukraine.

The White House had earlier planned a summit between Biden and Putin in a bid to defuse the Ukraine crisis.

A meeting with Biden after Putin ordered his troops to march into Ukraine would serve to legitimise the aggression and shine a spotlight on the weak US response to the Russian action.

At a background press briefing at the White House Press Room on Tuesday (Monday, US time), an unnamed official told reporters that the Biden administration was still "open" to engagement between the two leaders.

"There are predicates to a summit. We've said a few things about this (summit meeting) all along that I think remain true. One is that we were open to further engagements between the two leaders... but there were a number of predicates to a meeting like that. One being - one critical one being that Russia does not take further military action inside Ukraine. And so, we are going to - again, as I said in response to previous questions - have to continue to assess what Russia is doing," the administration official said.

Not ruling out a meeting with Putin comes on top of a weak US statement on Russia after it deployed soldiers inside two rebel-held territories Donetsk and Lugansk (also spelled as Luhansk) in Ukraine.

A transcript of the briefing, which was emailed to News9 on Tuesday (Feb 22) provides more evidence of the weak pushback on Russia from the White House, which has for weeks warned Russia against aggression and threatened severe sanctions on Putin and oligarchs in Moscow.

The official, while not ruling out the meeting, said that it appeared unlikely because Russian aggression seemed to be continuing. "Russia is continuing to prepare for military action that could take place in the coming hours or days.

"And so, (we) certainly can't commit to a meeting that has as a predicate that Russia won't take military action when it looks as imminently like they will," the official said.

Here is an edited transcript of a few significant questions asked to the senior administration official, and answers received during the briefing:

Q. 1. Would Russian troops moving into Donbas consist of an invasion - in your words, in your view - such that it would trigger the sanctions?

A. I don't have anything to, sort of, verify or confirm. But I did say that we are going to be carefully observing and assessing Russian actions and responding accordingly.

But I do also want to remind you and everyone on the call that the Russian troops moving into Donbas would not itself be a new step. Russia has had forces in the Donbas region for the past eight years. Their narrative has been that they do not; our, you know, certain knowledge has been that they have. And they are now - they're apparently now making a decision to do this in a more overt and open way. But this has been the state of affairs in that region and a big part of why it has been so unstable since 2014.

Q.2. Sorry to beat a dead horse here, but I just want to go back to this question over what constitutes a new invasion, because you said at one point that Russian troops moving into the Donbas would not be a new step. So, would Russian troops have to move past the Donbas, or what's the exact line that they would have to cross in eastern Ukraine to constitute a new invasion from that angle that you guys would consider a new invasion? And then my second question is: Will Secretary Blinken still be meeting with Foreign Minister Lavrov on Thursday as of now? Thank you.

A. So, again, I'll repeat what I've said up until now, which is: We are going to observe and assess what Russia does in the hours ahead and overnight, that we are going to respond to any actions that Russia takes in a way that we believe is appropriate to the action.

And we've already said that there will be additional steps taken tomorrow - again, I said earlier on this call will likely be sanction steps. And if Russia takes further actions, I suspect we would take further actions in response to that.

And so, I think that's basically how we see it. And I'm going to leave it there.