White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the administration has been clear that “we are committed to pursuing diplomacy until the moment an invasion begins.”
Satellite imagery released on February 20 shows the deployment of Russian armored vehicles in locations as close as 15 kilometers, or around 10 miles, from the Ukraine border. President Joe Biden has agreed "in principle" to a meeting with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin as long as that country holds off on what U.S. officials believe is an imminent assault on Ukraine.
Russia on Sunday rescinded earlier pledges to pull tens of thousands of its troops back from Ukraine’s northern border, a move that U.S. leaders said put Russia another step closer to what they said was the planned invasion of Ukraine. Residents of Ukraine’s capital filled a gold-domed cathedral to pray for peace.
Katerina Spanchak, who fled a region of eastern Ukraine when it was taken over by Russian-allied separatists, was among worshippers crowded into the capital’s St. Michael’s monastery, smoky with the candles burned by the faithful, to pray that Ukraine be spared. The announcement that Russia was reversing its pledge to withdraw its forces from Belarus came after two days of sustained shelling along a contact line between Ukraine’s soldiers and Russian-allied separatists in eastern Ukraine, an area that Ukraine and the West worry could be the flashpoint in igniting conflict.Biden convened the National Security Council at the White House on Russia’s military buildup around Ukraine.
Macron, a leader in European efforts to broker a peaceful resolution with Russia, also spoke separately to Zelenskyy, to British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and to Biden. Macron’s office said both the Ukrainian and Russian leaders had agreed to work toward a diplomatic solution "in coming days and coming weeks."
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