Lloyd Austin calls for international response should Russia invade Ukraine

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Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin called for a collective international response should Russia invade Ukraine.

Austin, during a trip to South Korea on Thursday, noted that any response or retaliatory action will “be done as a part of an international community,” though he added, “The best case, though, is that we won’t see an incursion by the Soviet Union into the Ukraine,” accidentally calling Russia by its former name.

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Austin is the latest U.S. official to speak out about the possibility of a Russian incursion in Ukraine. A day earlier, Secretary of State Antony Blinken pointed to “evidence that Russia made plans for significant aggressive moves against Ukraine.”

Blinken noted similarities between recent events and what led up to Russia’s invasion of Crimea in 2014 as indicators of what could happen.

“Now, we’ve seen this playbook before, in 2014, when Russia last invaded Ukraine. Then, as now, they significantly increased combat forces near the border,” he explained. “Then, as now, they intensified disinformation to paint Ukraine as the aggressor to justify pre-planned military action. We’ve seen that tactic again in just the past 24 hours. In recent weeks, we’ve also observed a massive spike, more than tenfold, in social media activity pushing anti-Ukrainian propaganda approaching levels last seen in the lead up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2014.”

Blinken met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Stockholm, State Department spokesman Ned Price said in a Thursday readout of the call. The Biden administration official called “for Russia to pull back its forces and return to a peacetime posture,” and he said the U.S. “and our allies are prepared to impose significant costs” should Russia choose the “path of military escalation.”

Ukrainian officials have said that Russia has deployed more than 90,000 troops near their border, while Moscow has accused Kyiv of building up its own military, though Ukrainian leaders have dismissed the suggestion, saying they have the right to deploy troops within their border, according to Reuters.

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Austin was asked about whether consequences from an invasion would be only economic in nature, and he didn’t answer the question directly, only acknowledging that the “best methods” would be utilized.

Ukraine, which was formerly a member of the Soviet Union and now wants to join the European Union and NATO, has become a significant flashpoint in the U.S-Russia relationship.

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