Russia-Ukraine crisis Live Updates: US says over 1.5 lakh Russian troops encircle Kyiv

Ukraine Crisis Live: Despite Moscow saying some of its troops are returning home, the United States Wednesday warned that a Russian invasion of Ukraine remained a distinct possibility. US President Joe Biden, in a televised address, said that reports of pullback of troops are unverified and revised the number of Russian troops encircling Ukraine from 1,00,000 to 1,50,000.

Meanwhile, a series of cyberattacks Tuesday knocked the websites of the Ukrainian army, the defense ministry and major banks offline. At least 10 Ukrainian websites were unreachable due to the attacks, including the defense, foreign and culture ministries and Ukraine’s two largest state banks. One European diplomat told Reuters that cyberattacks were a longstanding component of Russian strategy, and had been used by Moscow in past military confrontations with Georgia and Ukraine. “It’s part of their playbook,” the official said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Moscow is ready for talks with the US and NATO on limits for missile deployments and military transparency. Speaking after talks with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Putin said the US and NATO rejected Moscow’s demand to keep Ukraine and other ex-Soviet nations out of NATO, halt weapons deployments near Russian borders and roll back alliance forces from Eastern Europe.

Russia’s top diplomat has advised President Vladimir Putin to keep talking with the West on Moscow’s security demands, a signal from the Kremlin that it intends to continue diplomatic efforts amid US warnings of an imminent Russian invasion of Ukraine. Moscow wanted guarantees from the West that NATO won’t allow Ukraine and other former Soviet countries to join as members, and that the alliance will halt weapons deployments to Ukraine and roll back its forces from Eastern Europe, the demands flatly rejected by the West. The US and its NATO allies have repeatedly warned that Russia will pay a high price for any invasion—but they have sometimes struggled to present a united front.

Russia and Ukraine have been locked in a bitter conflict since 2014, when Ukraine’s Kremlin-friendly leader was driven from office by a popular uprising. Moscow responded by annexing the Crimean Peninsula and then backing a separatist insurgency in eastern Ukraine, where fighting has killed over 14,000 people.

With Thanks Refrence to: https://indianexpress.com/article/world/russia-ukraine-news-live-updates-putin-nato-us-china-7774499/