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World leaders are staging talks with Russia this week in a last-ditch attempt to stop Vladimir Putin invading Ukraine after months of escalating tension.

The UK government claim negotiations have reached a "critical juncture" and are desperately needed to bring the Kremlin "back from the brink of war".

With more than 100,000 Russian troops assembled at the Ukrainian border, inside Belarus and across the Black Sea, US intelligence officials claim an invasion could happen at "any moment".

Ambassador backtracks comments on Ukraine's NATO membership - live updates

Russia, however, continues to deny it is planning to go to war, but has showed little sign of backing down from its demands over Ukraine and NATO.

Here Sky News looks at who the key players are in the crisis.

Russia

Vladimir Putin

A former KGB agent, Putin has led Russia since 2000 and become synonymous with the country's increasingly hostile foreign policy.

Over the past two decades he has sought to reassert Russian dominance in the East, illegally invading and annexing the Ukrainian region of Crimea in 2014.

Russian troops began to appear on its border with Ukraine in late-2021, before the Kremlin made demands in December that NATO ceases all military activity in eastern Europe and Ukraine is never allowed to become a member.

He has repeatedly denied he is planning to invade Ukraine, but hasn't demonstrated any will to negotiate on his demands around Ukraine and NATO.

Sergei Lavrov

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has been a key negotiator in the crisis, meeting with his US counterpart, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and numerous others from across the West.

He has been in post since 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea.

In the run-up to the invasion, he told John Kerry, the US secretary of state at the time, that Russia had "absolutely no intention of, or interest in, crossing Ukraine's borders".

He previously told Mr Blinken that chances of a breakthrough in talks were "low" and mocked Liz Truss, the foreign secretary, after she visited Moscow for being "unprepared" and compared their conversation to "talking to a deaf person".

Sergei Shoigu

The defence minister also holds the rank of general of the Russian army and has been touted as a potential successor of Mr Putin given the pair's close ties.

In post since 2012, Mr Shoigu oversaw the invasion of Crimea in 2014. Ukraine later accused him of forming illegal rebel groups who fought against the Ukrainian Army.

He has held talks with various Western powers during the recent crisis, describing UK-Russian cooperation as "close to zero" after a meeting in Moscow with his counterpart, Ben Wallace.

There are around 130,000 troops stationed on the Russian border, as well as warplanes and ships in the Black Sea.

Ukraine

Volodymyr Zelenskyy

A former actor and comedian, political outsider Volodymyr Zelenskyy won the 2019 elections by a landslide.

Mr Zelenskyy has tried to distance Ukraine from Russia, despite Mr Putin's efforts to reassert influence on its former Soviet neighbour, instead setting his sights on both NATO and EU membership.

In response to the build-up of Russian troops at its border in late 2021, he called on NATO leaders to expedite Ukraine's membership and claimed a group of Russians and Ukrainian rebels were planning a coup to oust him.

He has the support of the West, including the United States, which has repeatedly said it would defend Ukraine should Russia invade.

Dmytro Kuleba

The Ukrainian foreign minister and a member of its National Defense and Security Council, Dmytro Kuleba is one of the youngest senior diplomats in the country's history.

He has repeatedly downplayed the imminent threat of a Russian invasion, accusing the US of exaggerating the danger.

During talks this month he maintained the Russian presence at Ukraine's border is "insufficient for a large-scale military operation".

And despite no sign of any Russian concessions, Mr Kuleba has insisted that Western presence in the region for talks "upsets the Kremlin's plans".

Denis Pushilin

After the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014, two other areas, both in the eastern Donbas region, declared independence from Ukraine.

Both the self-proclaimed people's republics of Donetsk and Luhansk are backed by Russia.

The DPR's separatist leader Denis Pushilin has said that increasing Western support of Ukraine could mean a full-scale war with Russia breaking out at any time.

"I don't rule out that Ukraine can attack at any moment," he said.

Some 15,000 people have been killed in fighting between separatists and the Ukrainian Army since 2014 - with senior government sources claiming Russia has deployed around 2,000 personnel to support the region since tensions escalated late last year.

Belarus

Alexander Lukashenko

President Alexander Lukashenko is a firm ally of Mr Putin, with the two countries forming a so-called union state to support economic and military integration.

Russia has been staging military drills involving 30,000 troops inside Belarus and close to its border with Ukraine.

The strategic location of the exercises has prompted fears that should Russia go to war with Ukraine, soldiers would easily be able to access the capital Kyiv and stage an invasion.

Ukraine have described the drills as "psychological pressure", but like Mr Putin, Mr Lukashenko is still denying there is a planned invasion.

"I'm certain there will be no war," he said this month.

United States

With the crisis mounting and sanctions on both sides, relations between Russia and the United States have been described as "at their worst since the Cold War".

After Russian troops emerged at the Ukrainian border last year, President Joe Biden declared his support of Ukraine and threatened the Kremlin with "strong economic and other measures".

In January, Mr Biden was criticised for saying a "minor incursion" by Russia would result in a lesser response from western allies, before the White House clarified his comments.

The US has since been represented at negotiations by Mr Blinken, who has travelled to Kyiv and Switzerland in an attempt to talk Russia down.

Last month he said any form of Russian aggression against Ukraine would be met with a "swift, severe, united" response.

Europe

As well as NATO itself, European leaders have also been trying to negotiate with their Russian counterparts.

French President Emmanuel Macron is trying to use the Minsk accords it brokered between Ukraine and Russian-backed separatists alongside Germany in 2014 and 2015.

The Normandy format within the ceasefire agreement facilitates all four countries sitting around a negotiating table together.

Mr Macron has spoken directly to both Mr Putin and Mr Zelenskyy in recent weeks but has been criticised for some of his interventions.

Germany's new chancellor, Olaf Scholz, is also visiting both Kyiv and Moscow.

Mr Scholz's position is made more difficult by the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline between Germany and Russia, which his Western allies have called on him to block, but on which no firm action has yet been taken.

NATO

The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation is made up of 30 member states across Europe and America.

Russia and Ukraine are not members, but the latter has been pathing a way to NATO membership since the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.

Mr Putin's main concern is NATO dominance in eastern Europe, where he is trying to re-establish Russia's Soviet-era influence.

He is demanding NATO never allow Ukraine to become a member.

Jens Stoltenberg, its secretary general, has said that a "sovereign, independent and stable Ukraine" is "key to Euro-Atlantic security" and is backing member states in their negotiations with Russia.

Although aiming for a peaceful resolution, NATO troops could be used to back Ukraine in the event of an invasion.

The rest is here:
Ukraine-Russia crisis: Who are the key players as war risks breaking out between Kyiv and the Kremlin? - Sky News

KYIV, Ukraine While the Russian military is not yet capable of mounting a total invasion of Ukraine, portions of its army have reached full combat strength and appear to be in the final stages of readiness for military action should the Kremlin order it, according to an assessment by the Ukrainian militarys high command.

Of particular concern to Ukrainian officials is the Crimean Peninsula, which Russia seized from Ukraine in 2014. In the last two weeks, Russia has deployed an additional 10,000 troops to the region, including infantry and airborne forces; more ominously, it has put some commands on the highest level of readiness, according to the militarys assessment.

Along with recent efforts to strengthen forces near two Kremlin-backed separatist enclaves in Ukraine, the deployments mean that Russia could soon be fully prepared to begin military actions along about 800 miles of Ukraines eastern and southern borders, according to the assessment.

The assessment was described in general terms by a senior Ukrainian military official who spoke on condition of anonymity to disclose confidential intelligence findings. It broadly aligns with newly released satellite images showing a significant military buildup in Crimea over the last few weeks.

But it is not just Crimea. Along much of Ukraines border, analysts are seeing what they describe as a near textbook example of a modern military making final preparations for war. They cited the arrival of logistical infrastructure like hospital and communications units, elements of electronic warfare meant for disrupting enemy communications, air power and additional troops to man equipment that was deployed earlier.

What unnerves me is how methodically theyre going through this, said Dara Massicot, a senior policy researcher at the RAND Corporation. Its by the book. You know whats coming next and it shows up.

The Kremlins ultimate intention remained unclear, the Ukrainian official said, echoing the determination of American officials who say that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has yet to decide whether to attack.

Russia has roughly 130,000 troops massed near Ukraines border, U.S. and Ukrainian officials say. The Kremlin has said repeatedly it has no plans to attack, and Mr. Putin while claiming that the United States was trying to goad Russia into war was less strident in his language in an appearance this week, leaving the door open for future diplomacy.

The Ukrainian militarys assessment of Russian capabilities diverges from one the Pentagon provided last week, which said that Moscow had deployed sufficient troops and military hardware to go far beyond a limited incursion into only the border regions. But it moved Ukraines military leadership closer to the American position.

And it painted a dire picture of Russian combat readiness in Crimea, an area that has drawn less attention; for months the focus has been on a Russian troop buildup in the east and, more recently, its moving of forces into Belarus on Ukraines northern border.

On top of the tens of thousands of troops already stationed in Crimea, Russia has recently deployed two additional battalion tactical groups battle ready forces of up to 1,000 troops plus tanks, armor and artillery. This includes one group of airborne troops and another that arrived with 10 trains worth of equipment and armor, the senior Ukrainian official said.

Ukrainian military officials assess that additional forces are on the way, including a subdivision of national guard troops, which could be deployed to hold territory in the event of an invasion.

Moreover, several units deployed to Crimea have been put on the Russian militarys highest state of military readiness, the official said, including marine forces based near the Kerch Strait, which separates mainland Russia from Crimea, and at the headquarters of Russias Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol. Troops in other locations have been put on the second highest level of alert, the official said.

Satellite images released by Maxar, a space technology company, this week confirm a buildup of forces in Crimea. They show the addition of numerous tent camps in areas close to military equipment, an indication that troops had arrived or were on the way.

Feb. 3, 2022, 2:31 p.m. ET

The senior Ukrainian official said any incursion could start with localized action and that, if successful, could prompt the Russians to expand the conflict zone. For now, theyre doing everything they can to panic us and panic the West, the official said, calling it a real game of poker.

The Crimea troops are augmented by Russian naval forces deployed to the Black Sea and Sea of Azov, a small strategic body of water over which Ukrainian and Russian forces have clashed repeatedly in recent years. Last April, Russia dispatched its Caspian Flotilla to the waters around Ukraine for exercises and left behind several large landing craft.

Ukrainian officials are now watching the movements of six Russian landing vessels capable of deploying tanks and thousands of troops that Russia has sent from its Baltic and Northern Fleets for exercises in the Mediterranean for any signs that they may continue into the Black Sea.

Its a huge assault grouping, Ihor Kabanenko, a retired admiral with the Ukrainian Navy, said. We have not enough capabilities at sea to adequately respond to such a Russian deployment.

Beyond Crimea, military analysts say it may only be a matter of weeks before the crescent of troops deployed along Ukraines northern, eastern and southern border is ready for action.

Until now, such forces might have looked menacingly large, but they lacked the supply lines and other logistical infrastructure needed to fight.

The satellite images showing row upon row of tanks that have appeared regularly in newspapers were most likely meant to send a message and force a conversation, said General Philip M. Breedlove, who was formerly the supreme allied commander of NATO.

Ominous warnings. Russia called the strike a destabilizing act that violated the cease-fire agreement, raising fears of a new intervention in Ukraine that could draw the United States and Europe into a new phase of the conflict.

The Kremlins position. President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, who has increasingly portrayed NATOs eastward expansion as an existential threat to his country, said that Moscows military buildupwas a response to Ukraines deepening partnership with the alliance.

Youve seen the pictures of the trucks lined up, Gen. Breedlove said. That is not in tactical or offensive formation. Thats a formation for show.

All that has started to change in recent weeks with the arrival of Iskandar-M cruise missiles, fighter jets and helicopters, according to satellite imagery, Ukrainian and western intelligence assessments and Russias own military announcements.

In some areas where Russia still does not have enough personnel to man equipment, more troops appear to be arriving daily, officials and analysts say. And there is still a question of whether the Russian military has been able to muster sufficient reserve forces for any prolonged military campaign.

In the coming weeks, Russia will likely conduct a series of military drills meant to test the preparedness of its forces, said Michael Kofman, the director of Russia studies at CNA, a research institute based in Arlington, Va. After that, the troops need only to get in their vehicles and head for the Ukraine border, he said.

What a military operation might look at this point is hotly debated.

In late January, Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III and Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that Russia had deployed enough forces to invade all of Ukraine, and suggested that fighting could even extend to the streets of Kyiv, the capital, something Mr. Kofman agrees with.

The Russian military is positioning itself to be able to conduct a large scale military operation against Ukraine, and its force posture indicates that if given the order theyre going to conduct a multi-axis attack, Mr. Kofman said.

Under Ukraines assessment, Russia would be unable to sustain an invasion across different points of attack for more than a week because of a lack of supplies including ammunition, food and fuel deployed to front line positions, nor does it have sufficient reserve forces.

In most areas there are enough forces available for smaller, localized assaults that could be used as a diversion from a main attack coming from the east or south where forces are stronger, according to the assessment.

For weeks, Ukraines president, Volodymyr Zelensky, has attempted to play down the severity of the Russian threat, though even he now appears to be growing more concerned.

This is not going to be a war of Ukraine and Russia, should diplomatic efforts still underway fail, Mr. Zelenksy said last week. This is going to be a European war, a full-fledged war.

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Russian Troops in Final Stages of Readiness Add to Worries for Ukraine - The New York Times

MOSCOW After touring the grand, marble-clad Victory museum in Moscow, dedicated to the Soviet Unions triumph over Nazi Germany in World War II, the two visitors concluded that the situation today is not all that different: Russia is under attack again.

America badly wants to start this war, said Olga A. Petrova, a retiree, referring to the simmering conflict between Russia and the West over Ukraine. NATO wants to bring its troops to our borders, they looked for our weak spots and they found Ukraine, she said, adding that Americans dont even know where Ukraine is on the map.

Mrs. Petrovas conviction that the United States is fomenting war between Russia and Ukraine reflects the thinking of many Russians, including her companion, Tamara N. Ivanova, who watches the two main talk shows on the countrys state-run television channels.

It is a message hammered home daily by the Kremlins propaganda machine.

Russians argue over a host of domestic issues, like the governments response to the coronavirus pandemic or ballooning inflation. Others, fed up with the Kremlins manipulation of the news media, have just opted out. But there is one thing many seem to agree with President Vladimir V. Putin about: If war does come, it will be the Americans fault.

The Levada Center, one of the few independent pollsters in Russia, says that 50 percent of Russians see the United States and NATO as responsible for rising tensions. Fewer than 5 percent blame the Kremlin.

Ms. Ivanova says she can see clearly how people in Ukraine and the West have been brainwashed. Her steadfast support of the Kremlin line is not surprising, given that pensioners like her constitute the core of President Vladimir V. Putins base.

In past years, a subset of younger, chiefly urban people might have taken to the streets in protest, but dissenting voices have been muzzled by a crackdown on demonstrations, independent news media and rights groups that began in earnest a year ago. Scores of young activists have been detained, expelled from universities and driven out of the country.

In response, says Sergei Belanovsky, a sociologist who studies public opinion, many Russians, including the countrys youth, have just opted out of following the news.

Yana Yakushkina, a 20-year-old medical student, seemed to embody that finding.

Attending a retrospective show in an exhibition hall opposite the Kremlin on the life and career of Viktor Tsoi, a famous Russian rock musician, she allowed that she doesnt pay much attention to politics, and that all this talk about war is just empty. With a shrug she added, No one can explain this never-ending conflict.

Darya Rokysheva, 19, an applied math student attending the exhibition, said that she, too, does not follow politics all that closely, and that she believes that conflict happens between governments, not between nations.

Mr. Belanovsky said that this sense of alienation from the news and issues facing the country is pervasive among Russians.

This crisis is perceived by some as the edge of consciousness something incomprehensible is happening to them, he said. They dont want to delve into it, and they think theres no point anyway.

Yet, even among those who may oppose the Kremlin on one domestic policy or another, Mr. Belanovsky adds, when it comes to Ukraine and relations with the West, many people share Mr. Putins narrative of Russia as a besieged fortress.

Aleksei Izotov, 45, an IT entrepreneur, is one of them. He said that while he abhors systemic corruption in Russia and the fact that Mr. Putin is unwilling to give up power, when it comes to foreign policy the president is doing everything right.

He added: I like it, and I think that I share the point of view of most people.

Mr. Izotov said he does not watch state television, preferring to get his news from the internet, where outlets with a small but loyal following can still buck the Kremlin line. Nevertheless, he shares the view that the current Ukraine crisis has been provoked by the United States and NATO.

Feb. 3, 2022, 2:31 p.m. ET

America pursues its geopolitical goals in the post-Soviet space, it wants to divide Russia and post-Soviet countries, he said, wearing a black sweater embossed with Mr. Tsois signature slogan We Need Change!

Mr. Izotov said he sympathizes with Russias most prominent opposition figure, Aleksei A. Navalny, who was jailed last year for violating parole by leaving the country. Mr. Navalny had left to seek treatment for poisoning after what Germany and other Western nations said was a government assassination attempt.

But Mr. Izotov is fatalistic about Mr. Navalnys chances of altering the existing order, believing that Mr. Putin will rule Russia until he dies and will protect his friends in power.

Even then, Mr. Izotov said he couldnt say the current president is evil, or an enemy.

Many Russians share the belief that they are powerless to influence events, a sociologist, Grigory Yudin, recently told Ekho Moskvy, a state-owned but liberal-leaning radio station. The lack of public outcry is in stark contrast to the response in 2014, after Mr. Putin annexed Ukraines Crimean peninsula.

Back then, about 50,000 people came out to protest the military action in Moscow. Now, even an online petition circulating since Jan. 30 has received only 5,000 signatures.

Citizens of Russia are becoming hostages of criminal adventurism, which is dictating Russias foreign policy line, the authors of the petition, prominent Russian intellectuals, wrote.

Ominous warnings. Russia called the strike a destabilizing act that violated the cease-fire agreement, raising fears of a new intervention in Ukraine that could draw the United States and Europe into a new phase of the conflict.

The Kremlins position. President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, who has increasingly portrayed NATOs eastward expansion as an existential threat to his country, said that Moscows military buildupwas a response to Ukraines deepening partnership with the alliance.

But no one asks the citizens of Russia, they added. There is no public discussion. Only one point of view is presented on state television, and that is the point of view of the supporters of the war.

Ivan Preobrazhensky, an independent political analyst, says that Russians apathy, the belief in this case that a war is inevitable, has been reinforced by years of political oppression.

The Russian society doesnt want war, but its biggest part also came to terms that it is most likely inevitable, he said in an interview. He added that, with every round of tension over Ukraine, the Russian government induces people to think of war as routine.

They are people like Sergei Ryzhkov, who works in construction, who said he doesnt pay attention to the tensions over Ukraine.

I am not interested, he said. Its my opinion that these are just political showdowns.

Still, said Mr. Belanovsky, the sociologist, if it comes to an actual war with real armaments and, inevitably, body bags, those attitudes could change.

I think that such news will certainly reach the apolitical people, he said. And the reaction will be mostly negative.

Arseny Filippov, 22, said he already feels the consequences of Russias posturing. Before these events, traveling to Europe was affordable, and then the ruble just collapsed, he said. An architect, Mr. Filippov said that he gets news from independent sources online and from foreign news outlets.

He said that he could not understand why, from the beginning of Russias conflict with Ukraine in 2014, the Kremlin took steps like annexing Crimea given how damaging it all was for the country and its economy.

He said that while he at first refused to believe that a war with Ukraine was inevitable, he is not so sure now, after two months of tensions.

I very much hope that it wont happen, he said.

Alina Lobzina contributed reporting.

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On Ukraine, Many Russians Have No Doubt: Its the Fault of the U.S. - The New York Times

The train station in Kharkiv, in northeast Ukraine near the Russian border, is a giant building in the Stalinist Empire style, ornate and overpowering in scale. Upon arrival, you exit the building into a swarm of taxi drivers hawking their services. Unlike cabbies in most places in the world, these men are not offering to drive you into town; instead, they promise to drive you to the border, or the full eighty kilometres (fifty miles) to Belgorod, the nearest Russian city. Its always like this in countries at war: travel that used to be easy, fast, and cheap becomes convoluted and expensive. People used to travel between Ukraine and Russia by air or by rail, but the planes are no longer flying and the Kyiv-Moscow train is no longer running. War has turned Kharkiv, Ukraines second-largest city, from a regional center into a way station.

It was always a frontier town, Denys Kobzin, the director of the Kharkiv Institute for Social Research, told me. A hundred years ago, the city was the frontier of Bolshevism, the first capital of Soviet Ukraine. Later, it was an industrial and scientific hub. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Kharkiv remained a trade and university town, largely Russian-speaking and Russia-facing, back when those were geographical, economic, and cultural facts of little political import. For the last eight years, Kharkiv, a city of some 1.5 million, has represented a different frontier: between what Ukrainians call the governed and ungoverned regions of Ukraine. The Donetsk and Luhansk regions, where a Russian military incursion helped overthrow the government in 2014, are just southeast of the city, and up to half a million people displaced from those regions have settled in Kharkiv.

The ungoverned territories have named themselves the Donetsk Peoples Republic and the Luhansk Peoples Republic. Eight years ago, there was an attempt to establish a Kharkiv Peoples Republic. On March 1, 2014days after the former Ukrainian President, Viktor Yanukovych, had fled the country, and just as Russian troops were occupying Crimeasomeone placed a white-blue-and-red Russian flag atop the Kharkiv regional-government building (another giant Stalinist Empire-style structure). Less than an hour later, the flag was replaced by a blue-and-yellow Ukrainian flag.

In Freedom Square, so named after the fall of the Soviet Union (it used to bear the name of the founder of the Soviet secret police), a large blue-and-yellow tentabout the size of a trailer home and a halfsits opposite the regional-government building. A blue-and-yellow banner flying from the tent says, Everything for victory. In the first years of the war, the tent served as a clearing house for volunteers and donations: clothes, blankets, tools, portable heaters, infrared night-vision binoculars, and whatever else people brought to aid the war effort and its casualties. More recently, activists who continue to staff the tent have insisted that it must remain in the square as a reminder that the war is not over.

Boris Redin, who is fifty-three, has been volunteering at the tent from the beginning. Before the war, he ran a series of small shipping businesses. A Kharkiv native, he served in the Soviet military, in the nineteen-eighties. I took part in training exercises five times, he told me. Each time, they began with the statement that the global layout has grown fraught and ended with the announcement that our tanks are in the streets of London. Redin has no doubt that Russia maintains the same military ambitions as the Soviet Union, and that the road to London may lie through Kharkiv. In a January 20th interview with the Washington Post, Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian President, mentioned Kharkiv as a possible target of Russian military aggression; since then, there has been a steady stream of journalists to the tent. Today, I talked to a Slovene, a Serb, a Pole, two Estonians, and three Spaniards, Redin said.

Many Kharkiv residents are not getting their information about the threat of war from the tent in the square, or even from the media. (I have written about Ukraines post-Soviet and post-colonial distrust of lites.) Since 2014, the community has formed a mighty network of social networks, beginning with the volunteer efforts to help the military and displaced people, Denys Kobzin said. So I know that I dont need to put my trust in civil defense or the draft office, but I can trust the network that surrounds me. Everyone is talking, everyone has ideas of what might happen and what they can do, whether its taking up arms or driving medical supplies to the front. They have the experience. You should have seen the way that volunteer effort functioned, Kobzin said, describing the operation in the early years of the war. My apartment was one of the way stations, and for three years I had a room that was always full of donated stuff. And now people are pulling at the threads that connect them to others, checking: Are you ready? Im ready. I am confident in the way of a person who has been able to lean on anothers shoulder.

Kobzin is forty-nine. He has lived in Kharkiv since he was a child, and has been studying public opinion there for more than twenty years. Eight years ago, Kharkiv was a very different city. A lot of residents had strong family, cultural, and economic ties to Russia. Since then, Kobzin said, Kharkiv has undergone a process of patriotization: a clear majority of the residents have come to identify with the Ukrainian state. One reason, he said, is the ever-growing lawlessness, poverty, corruption, and isolation in the ungoverned regions.

Compared to Donetsk and Luhansk, Kharkiv is thriving. It has absorbed upwards of three hundred and fifty thousand displaced people from the ungoverned regions. The city soaked them up like a sponge, Kobzin said. We now have more teachers, more doctors. But Alexandra Naryzhna, an urban planner who ran an unsuccessful campaign for mayor two years ago, told me that a sense of contingency had set in since the war began. Yes, weve built all this new housing, but its cheap construction, as though its meant to be temporary, she said. Even capital projects, such as a seventy-million-dollar reconstruction of the city zoothe oldest in Ukrainehave an air of shoddy impermanence to them, she said. Its like we are living temporary lives.

Naryzhna, who is thirty-seven, lives in a house built by her great-great-grandfather. Before 2014, her professional and intellectual life was tied to Russia: Moscow has urban-studies and contemporary-art centers that publish a lot of books in Russian translation. We used to go there for all the architecture exhibitions and buy books, Naryzhna said. Now you might order one and have to wait for it for months. Its not hard to get to Moscow: there are two dozen men milling around the railroad station who could drive you to Russia at any moment. Its that, emotionally, Ive had to cut myself off. You can be spending time with a relative and they might just say, Its a good thing we took Crimea. That is exactly what happened several years ago, when Naryzhna met up with a family member in occupied Crimea. I realize that they are under the influence of propaganda, she said. They are being told that we eat babies for breakfast, or that the Russian Army has to come in to defend us against fascism. She has limited her contact with family members in both Russia and Germany, where Russian speakers also watch Russian state television.

There is a certain reductive picture of Ukraine that is promoted by Kremlin propagandists and often uncritically picked up by Western media. It holds that Ukraine is divided into two parts, the Ukrainian-speaking west and the Russian-speaking east, and that the west is therefore pro-Western while the east is pro-Russian. It is true that most western Ukrainians grew up speaking Ukrainian at home and at school, and most eastern Ukrainians grew up speaking Russian at home and, until fairly recently, at school. Most Ukrainians can fluidly switch between the two languages; a couple of years ago, one would switch on Ukrainian television and hear a mix of Ukrainian and Russian, spoken by Ukrainians to one another. (The languages are related but not mutually intelligible: a Russian speaker from Russia wouldnt understand Ukrainian, but Ukrainians generally understand both.) But Ukrainians language identities are decoupled from their national identities, Kobzin said, and their national identity as Ukrainians has been fortified over the last eight years, both by the threat of war and the solidarity that Ukrainians have forged and observed in the face of it.

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How a City Close to the Ukraine-Russia Border Has Been Shaped by War - The New Yorker

U.S. Ambassador to NATO Julianne Smith said the U.S. and its allies are continuing to signal to Russia that they are ready to respond to an escalation, including by imposing "massive economic sanctions and consequences."

"We're looking at all options," she told CNBC's Hadley Gamble on Thursday.

In response to a question on whether sanctions are limited in their effectiveness, Smith said there isn't "any indication yet" that Russian President Vladimir Putin has decided what to do with the troops that he has deployed to the border with Ukraine.

"We're trying to sharpen the choice for President Putin as he weighs his options here," she added.

The growing military presence at the border has sparked fears of a war between Moscow and Kyiv. Negotiations with the U.S. and other Western powers have not yielded much progress, and the possibility of punishing sanctions has not pressured Russia into de-escalating the situation.

The former president of Ukraine,Petro Poroshenko, previously told CNBC that sanctions on Nord Stream 2 would make Russia weaker and discourage Putin from attacking. Nord Stream 2 is a pipeline project that would bypass Ukraine while carrying gas from Russia to Europe.

The Kremlin has denied it is planning to invade Ukraine, in what would be a repeat of its illegal annexationand occupation of Crimea in 2014.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is seen on a screen as he speaks during his annual press conference at the Moscow Manege on December 23, 2021, in Moscow, Russia.

Mikhail Svetlov | Getty Images News | Getty Images

Separately, Smith said that the decision to send 3,000 U.S. troops closer to Ukraine was made partly to reassure allies in the region and to serve as a deterrent.

Asked if that could be seen as provocative to Russia, she pointed out that the numbers differ greatly, estimating that around 127,000 troops are stationed around Ukraine's border.

"I really think we're comparing apples and oranges," she said, adding that U.S. troops are not going into Ukraine and will not be permanently moved to central and eastern Europe.

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U.S. is weighing all options including 'massive' sanctions if Russia invades Ukraine, ambassador to NATO says - CNBC