Biden threatens: No gas pipeline if Russia invades Ukraine

WASHINGTON — In a flur­ry of diplo­ma­cy across two con­ti­nents, Pres­i­dent Joe Biden met with Germany’s new leader Mon­day and vowed the cru­cial Nord Stream 2 Rus­sia-to-Ger­many gas pipeline will be blocked if Rus­sia fur­ther invades Ukraine. Russia’s Vladimir Putin retort­ed that the U.S. and its allies are the only ones talk­ing invasion.

Putin and French Pres­i­dent Emmanuel Macron met for more than five hours in Moscow at the same time Biden and Ger­man Chan­cel­lor Olaf Scholz spoke at the White House in efforts to defuse the cri­sis before armed con­flict breaks out. Rus­sia has massed thou­sands of troops at the Ukraine bor­der, adding mil­i­tary might almost daily.

The White House has expressed increas­ing alarm about the prospects of war, and Biden has been look­ing to solid­i­fy sup­port among Euro­pean allies for econ­o­my-jar­ring sanc­tions against Rus­sia if it attacks.

“If Rus­sia invades, that means tanks and troops cross­ing the bor­der of Ukraine again, then there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2,” Biden said. “We will bring an end to it.”

That would hurt Rus­sia eco­nom­i­cal­ly but also cause sup­ply prob­lems for Ger­many. Con­struc­tion of the pipeline has been com­plet­ed, but it is not yet operating.

“We are joint­ly ready, and all of NATO is ready,” Biden said, refer­ring to the pow­er­ful West­ern alliance, though Ukraine is not a member.

While Biden reit­er­at­ed with cer­ti­tude that the pipeline would not move for­ward, Scholz stressed the need to keep some ambi­gu­i­ty about sanc­tions in order to press Rus­sia to de-esca­late the crisis.

“It’s nec­es­sary for Rus­sia to under­stand that a lot more could hap­pen than they’ve per­haps cal­cu­lat­ed with them­selves,.” Scholz said.

The buildup of over 100,000 Russ­ian troops near Ukraine has fueled West­ern wor­ries of a pos­si­ble offen­sive. White House nation­al secu­ri­ty advis­er Jake Sul­li­van warned Sun­day that Rus­sia could invade Ukraine “any day,” trig­ger­ing a con­flict that would come at an “enor­mous human cost.”

At the same time, Biden and NATO allies have made clear there are no plans for send­ing in troops to fight Rus­sia on Ukraine’s behalf.

Macron and Putin, dur­ing their lengthy meet­ing — with a din­ner that fea­tured the choice of stur­geon or rein­deer — reg­is­tered their dis­agree­ments but also empha­sized a need for more talks.

Putin not­ed that the U.S. and NATO have ignored Moscow’s demands that the alliance guar­an­tee it will keep Ukraine and oth­er ex-Sovi­et nations out, refrain from plac­ing weapons in Ukraine and roll back alliance forces from East­ern Europe.

“We are cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly against any fur­ther NATO’s expan­sion east­ward because it pos­es a threat to us,” Putin said. “It’s not us who’s advanc­ing to NATO, it’s NATO com­ing to us and so it’s illog­i­cal to talk about Russia’s aggres­sive behavior.”

He scoffed at West­ern descrip­tions of NATO as a defen­sive alliance, say­ing sar­cas­ti­cal­ly that “peo­ple of Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan have learned it from their own expe­ri­ence.” And he threat­ened a wider war if Ukraine should join the alliance and per­haps try to win back Crimea, which Rus­sia annexed in 2014.

“Euro­pean coun­tries will auto­mat­i­cal­ly be drawn into a mil­i­tary con­flict with Rus­sia,” Putin said. “You will be drawn into that con­flict beyond your will. There will be no winners.”

Macron described the talks as “sub­stan­tial, deep” with a focus on con­di­tions that could help de-escalation.

“We tried to build con­verg­ing ele­ments,” he said. “The upcom­ing days will be cru­cial and deep dis­cus­sions togeth­er will be needed.”

Putin sig­naled his readi­ness to con­tin­ue nego­ti­a­tions and denied anew that Rus­sia has any inten­tion of invad­ing Ukraine.

In the mean­time, Biden warned “it would be wise” for Amer­i­cans oth­er than essen­tial diplo­mats to leave Ukraine.

On a pos­i­tive note, Putin said with­out elab­o­ra­tion that some of Macron’s pro­pos­als could serve as a basis for a set­tle­ment of the con­flict in east­ern Ukraine, adding that they agreed to have a call after Macron’s vis­it to Kyiv Tuesday.

Like­wise, Biden said when asked if there remained an “offramp” for Rus­sia in the stand­off, “The answer is yes.”

Before meet­ing Biden, Scholz told Ger­man media that “there will be a very high price if Ukraine is attacked mil­i­tar­i­ly. And we are prepar­ing for this very pre­cise­ly and have been talk­ing about the details for a long time.” Scholz will trav­el to Kyiv and Moscow Feb. 14–15.

Ger­man Defense Min­is­ter Chris­tine Lam­brecht said her coun­try would add up to 350 troops with­in a few days to about 500 already a part of a NATO bat­tle­group in Lithua­nia. “With this, we are strength­en­ing our con­tri­bu­tion to forces on NATO’s east­ern flank and send­ing a very clear sig­nal of uni­ty to our allies,” she said.

Biden already has deployed addi­tion­al U.S. troops to Poland, Roma­nia and Ger­many, and a few dozen elite U.S. troops and equip­ment land­ed Sun­day in south­east­ern Poland near the bor­der with Ukraine, with hun­dreds more infantry troops of the 82nd Air­borne Divi­sion set to arrive.

Britain said the U.K. was send­ing 350 troops to Poland to bol­ster NATO forces, join­ing 100 Roy­al Engi­neers already there.

At a news con­fer­ence in Wash­ing­ton, U.S. Sec­re­tary of State Antony Blinken and EU for­eign pol­i­cy chief Josep Bor­rell defend­ed the increas­ing­ly dire West­ern warn­ings that a Russ­ian inva­sion may be imminent.

“This is not alarmism. This is sim­ply the facts,” Blinken said. “And the facts are that we’ve seen over the last few months a mas­sive amass­ing of Russ­ian forces on Ukraine’s borders.”

Bor­rell not­ed that “140,000 troops massed on the bor­der is not to go to have tea.”

NATO Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al Jens Stoltenberg said the alliance is weigh­ing a more per­ma­nent mil­i­tary pres­ence in south­east Europe in response to Russia’s “mas­sive mil­i­tary deploy­ment” near Ukraine.

“We are con­sid­er­ing more longer-term adjust­ments to our pos­ture, our pres­ence in the east­ern part of the alliance,” Stoltenberg said after talks in Brus­sels with Pol­ish Pres­i­dent Andrzej Duda. “If Rus­sia real­ly wants less NATO close to the bor­ders, they get the opposite.”

Stoltenberg gave no details and said no final deci­sion has been made, but the move could mir­ror NATO’s long-term mil­i­tary pres­ence in Esto­nia, Latvia, Lithua­nia and Poland, where about 5,000 troops are sta­tioned. It would see a sim­i­lar force based in Bul­gar­ia, Roma­nia, Hun­gary and Slovakia.

The aim would be only to bol­ster the defens­es of NATO allies in the region. The troops would not cross into Ukraine should Rus­sia invade.

Biden and Scholz also dis­cussed con­tin­gency plans for pro­vid­ing gas sup­plies to Europe should Rus­sia cut off sup­ply. Europe is already deal­ing with liq­ue­fied nat­ur­al gas sup­plies being sapped by a cold win­ter last year, a sum­mer with lit­tle renew­able ener­gy gen­er­a­tion and Rus­sia deliv­er­ing less than usual.

Biden assert­ed the U.S. and oth­er coun­tries could make up a “sig­nif­i­cant por­tion” of sup­plies lost should Rus­sia move to cut off Europe.

But ener­gy experts say replac­ing Russ­ian gas would be com­pli­cat­ed and can’t be done overnight. Export ter­mi­nals cost bil­lions of dol­lars to build and are work­ing at capac­i­ty in the U.S.

Cor­bet and Isachenkov report­ed from Moscow. Asso­ci­at­ed Press writ­ers Matthew Lee, Colleen Long and Zeke Miller in Wash­ing­ton, Lorne Cook in Brus­sels, Yuras Kar­manau in Kyiv, Ukraine, Geir Moul­son and Frank Jor­dans in Berlin and Jill Law­less in Lon­don contributed.

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