KYIV – The United States has taken the extraordinary step of ordering employees at its embassy in Kyiv to depart Ukraine by Sunday amid fears that a Russian invasion is imminent, BuzzFeed News has learned.
Two sources with knowledge of the evacuation plans — including one who provided images of a conversation they had with an embassy employee about the evacuation — said that employees were told Friday morning that they were to pack their bags and prepare to depart Ukraine.
There was no activity outside the embassy in Kyiv early Saturday when BuzzFeed News visited. But many lights were on in the building, which sits behind a reinforced fence. Security guards patrolled the grounds.
A limited number of diplomats could be relocated to western Ukraine, according to the Associated Press, which first reported news of the embassy pullout. The embassy had previously discussed the possibility of temporarily relocating its staff to western Ukraine, BuzzFeed News reported this week.
The US Embassy, the State Department, and the White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said during a press conference on Friday that the US is continuing to draw down the embassy. “We will continue that process. And we’ve also been very clear that any American citizens who remain in Ukraine should leave now,” he said.
But that option appears to have been ruled out after new intelligence obtained by Washington indicated Russia may invade Ukraine in the coming days.
“The way [Putin] has built up his forces, and put them in place, along with other indicators that we have collected through intelligence, makes it clear to us there is a very distinct possibility that Russia will choose to act militarily and there is reason to believe that could happen on a reasonably swift timeframe,” national security adviser Jake Sullivan said Friday. “The Russians are in a position to be able to mount a major military action in Ukraine any day now.”
The Kremlin has denied that it is planning an attack on Ukraine. But in a move that will likely lend credence to the assessments that it is, the Russian Embassy in Kyiv began to evacuate its embassy staff from Ukraine, according to the state-run RIA Novosti news agency.
The US embassy evacuation order came down as the White House urged all Americans to leave Ukraine within the next 24 to 48 hours, warning that Russian President Vladimir Putin could order the more than 100,000 troops he has positioned around the country to attack “at any time.”
US officials also requested that US members of the Organization for Security and Co-Operation in Europe’s Special Monitoring Mission, which has been tracking and monitoring ceasefire violations in eastern Ukraine, be pulled out of the region, an OSCE official told BuzzFeed News.
US officials also asked for US members of the monitoring group, more than 40 people, to be out of the region by Feb. 15. The Kyiv Post first reported on the OSCE members’ withdrawal.
On Friday, the State Department was also reaching out to individual US citizens, including a BuzzFeed News photographer in Kyiv, who remained in Ukraine, asking them if they had made arrangements to leave the country.
Meanwhile, Russia is holding military drills in its western regions bordering Ukraine and joint exercises with Belarus in that country. The war games include nearly 100 battle tactical groups, sophisticated missile systems, fighter jets, and tanks, and are expected to end on Feb. 20.
“At the end of the exercises is when [Russian forces] will be ready for some kind of attack,” Andriy Zagorodnyuk, the former defense minister of Ukraine, predicted in an interview with BuzzFeed News.
Ukraine is conducting its own military drills in parallel with Russia’s.
President Joe Biden plans to speak with Putin on Saturday, according to CNN.
Source: https://www.buzzfeed.com/christopherm51/us-embassy-kyiv-evacuate-ukraine-russia
