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Biden Predicts Putin Will Order Ukraine Invasion, but ‘Will Regret Having Done It’

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Mr. Biden’s comments went well beyond the formal intelligence assessments described by White House officials, which conclude that Russia’s president has not yet decided whether to invade.
President Biden said on Wednesday that he now expected President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia would order an invasion of Ukraine, delivering a grim assessment that the diplomacy and threat of sanctions issued by the United States and its European allies were unlikely to stop the Russian leader from sending troops across the border. “Do I think he’ll test the West, test the United States and NATO, as significantly as he can? Yes, I think he will,” Mr. Biden told reporters during a nearly two-hour-long news conference in the East Room of the White House. He added, almost with an air of fatalism: “But I think he will pay a serious and dear price for it that he doesn’t think now will cost him what it’s going to cost him. And I think he will regret having done it.” Asked to clarify whether he was accepting that an invasion was coming, Mr. Biden said: “My guess is he will move in. He has to do something.” The president later acknowledged that Mr. Putin’s move might not amount to a full-scale invasion of the country. Still, Mr. Biden’s comment went well beyond the current intelligence assessments described by White House officials, which conclude that Mr. Putin has not made a decision about whether to invade. The comment is also likely to provoke concern in Ukraine and among NATO allies, because Mr. Biden acknowledged that if Mr. Putin only conducted a partial invasion, NATO nations could be split on how strongly to react. “It’s very important that we keep everyone in NATO on the same page,’’ Mr. Biden said. “That’s what I’m spending a lot of time doing. There are differences. There are differences in NATO as to what countries are willing to do, depending on what happened, the degree to which they’re able to go.” Pentagon officials say that such an invasion, intended to split and destabilize Ukraine, would most likely extend Moscow’s control of eastern regions of the country, where a grinding war with Russian-backed separatists has been underway in the eight years since Russia annexed Crimea. But the president also seemed to contradict some of his own aides, who have said in the past week, in background briefings for reporters, that there would be no distinction between a small incursion into Russian-speaking territory in Ukraine and a full attack on the country. An invasion is an invasion is an invasion, one State Department official, speaking to reporters on condition of anonymity, said last week. A half-hour after the president ended his news conference, Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, issued a clarification of his remarks, saying that Mr. Biden would treat any move over the border as an invasion — but was reserving judgment on how NATO would respond to other kinds of attacks. “If any Russian military forces move across the Ukrainian border, that’s a renewed invasion, and it will be met with a swift, severe and united response from the United States and our allies,” she said in a statement.

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