Biden Admin: ‘No Active Planning’ for Evacuation of Americans From Ukraine

Pentagon spokesman John Kirby speaks during a briefing at the Pentagon on Feb. 2, 2022. President Joe Biden is sending about 2,000 troops from Fort Bragg, North Carolina, to Poland and Germany this week and sending part of an infantry Stryker squadron of roughly 1,000 troops based in Germany to Romania. AP Photo/Andrew Harnik

A top Pentagon spokesman confirmed on Feb. 9 that there is “no active planning underway” for Americans who live in Ukraine amid heightened tensions between the West and Russia.

“There is no active planning underway for what we would call a non-combatant evacuation inside Ukraine. There is no design to do this at this time,“ Department of Defense press secretary John Kirby told CNN. ”Americans living in Ukraine have plenty of time to leave Ukraine. And certainly, the State Department has made it clear that it does not want Americans going to Ukraine now.”

When pressed about whether U.S. officials want Americans in the Eastern European country to leave, Kirby responded in the affirmative.

“It’s really not a good time for American citizens to be in Ukraine, and we’ve been actively encouraging people to leave,” he said. “The president himself said that if you are in Ukraine, you should think about leaving, and there are many means, vehicles, and transportation options available to you to do this safely right now.”

Russia on Feb. 10 started a large-scale military exercise in Belarus on its western borders with Lithuania and Poland, and along its eastern border with Ukraine. Some 100,000 troops have already been deployed by Moscow to the area in recent weeks.

But Russia and Belarus have stated that the drills, known as United Resolve, are designed to test the readiness of their forces. Russian President Vladimir Putin and Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko announced the exercises in December 2021 during a joint meeting.

NATO officials last week speculated the exercises would involve as many as 30,000 combat troops and described the drills as “the biggest Russian deployment there since the Cold War.”

A convoy of Russian armored vehicles moves along a highway in Crimea, on Jan. 18, 2022. AP Photo

On Feb. 9, White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters that the exercises don’t suggest Moscow aims to deescalate tensions.

“We see this as certainly more of an escalatory and not a deescalatory action,” she said.

In a new round of diplomacy, Britain’s foreign minister sparred publicly with Russia’s top diplomat at talks in Moscow, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson visited NATO headquarters in Brussels, and officials from Russia, Ukraine, Germany, and France were due to meet in Berlin to discuss the conflict in eastern Ukraine.

“I honestly don’t think a decision has yet been taken” by Moscow on whether to attack, Johnson told a news conference with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg in Brussels. “But that doesn’t mean that it is impossible that something absolutely disastrous could happen very soon indeed.”

“This is probably the most dangerous moment, I would say, in the course of the next few days, in what is the biggest security crisis that Europe has faced for decades, and we’ve got to get it right,” he said. “And I think that the combination of sanctions and military resolve, plus diplomacy is what is in order.”

It comes as UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss was criticized by her counterpart, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, during a news conference.

“I’m honestly disappointed that what we have is a conversation between a dumb and a deaf person ... our most detailed explanations fell on unprepared soil,” Lavrov told reporters.

Reuters contributed to this report.