The Biden administration is seriously concerned about the potential for an invasion of Ukraine by Russian troops at the beginning of the new year, since half of the troops required for such an operation are about 175 thousand. - already, according to the US, is concentrated on the border.

Although the American leadership emphasizes that Putin's plans for Ukraine are still unclear, and intelligence does not allow it to be asserted with certainty that Russia is going to start a war, nevertheless the Russian army is ready for such a war, and if it breaks out, then, according to experts,.

The fears of the Americans are intensified by the fact that recently the Russian media have stepped up a disinformation campaign, claiming that NATO and Ukraine themselves threaten Russia, and thus, according to the publication, preparing a pretext for an invasion.

As the newspaper notes, the Russian invasion of Ukraine will create a serious crisis in the issue of national security both for Europe and for the Biden administration, which has declared its `` iron intention '' to ensure the safety of Ukrainian borders and its independence..

While Americans still believe that crises are best dealt with through diplomacy, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, at a meeting in Stockholm with Sergei Lavrov, emphasized that the US will respond to Russia's aggression against Ukraine with `` strong economic measures that they have refrained from in the past..

However, according to the New York Times, no one knows if such threats can stop Putin.. Moreover, the Russian Foreign Minister has already dismissed them, recalling that in recent years the United States has repeatedly applied sanctions against Russia without, according to him, any visible results..

Times columnist Edward Lucas writes that, like the godfather of the mafia, Putin first creates a problem and then proposes to solve it if the West agrees to concessions.

So the telephone conversation between Putin and Biden, scheduled for Tuesday, promises to raise the international prestige of the Russian leader and will allow him to announce a list of wishes to the West, among which is the demand to end NATO expansion, limit the military presence of the West and essentially let Russia dismember Ukraine, Lucas said..

But the real goals are much broader, he warns - this is the end of the post-1991 European order, in which Russia no longer considers itself bound by past promises and standards..

And Putin will not stop at Ukraine, the observer continues.. By forcing us to accept his paranoid point of view, he may demand the demilitarization of Russia's neighboring countries, stop military exercises there and, perhaps, even withdraw NATO troops from Poland and the Baltic countries..

But after all, NATO expanded eastward not at all within the framework of some secret plan to take Russia into the ring, reminds the author of the article, everything was quite the opposite.. It was Russia's constant threats to neighbors that forced them to seek NATO membership or strengthen ties with the alliance..

And the bloc itself, when it received the former members of the Warsaw Pact, at first consulted with Russia, involved it in decision-making and even refrained from sending its contingents there and conducting military exercises, so as not to alarm Moscow..

NATO's behavior changed only in 2010, after the cyberattack on Estonia, the war with Georgia and military exercises in 2009, during which Russia practiced the invasion of the Baltic countries and a nuclear strike on Warsaw. And even then, this answer was mostly on paper, and the first (very limited) contingents were sent to the Baltic countries and Poland only after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2014..

So, Lucas writes, it was high time for us to tell Putin that all his complaints are complete nonsense, but instead we are thinking about how to pacify him..