Britain offers jets, warships to bolster NATO forces amid escalating Russia threat to Ukraine

U.S. allies including France, Germany and Norway remain hopeful that some kind of diplomatic compromise can be reached.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said Saturday that deploying more British forces to the region would “send a clear message to the Kremlin — we will not tolerate their destabilizing activity, and we will always stand with our NATO allies in the face Russian hostility.” Johnson is expected to speak to Russian President Vladimir Putin this week and will visit the region in coming days.

The Foreign Office is also expected to announce a toughening of its sanctions regime in Parliament on Monday so the United Kingdom can target Russia’s strategic and financial interests.

The British military commitment comes a day after President Biden said he planned to send some U.S. troops to Eastern Europe to bolster NATO allies, describing the number as “not too many.” The U.S. military has issued “prepare to deploy” orders to 8,500 personnel.

Details of the U.K. offer — including a potential doubling of troop numbers in the region — will be finalized with NATO officials this week. The British aircraft carrier HMS Prince of Wales has been put on standby “to move within hours should tensions rise,” the government statement said.

Tobias Ellwood, a member of the British Parliament and chair of a lower house defense committee, said the tensions in Ukraine are “our Cuban missile crisis moment, and we must not blink.”

“From a Russian perspective, there’s never been a better time to invade Ukraine — something Putin has been wanting to do for a long time,” Ellwood told British broadcaster Sky News on Saturday. “He’s enjoying this international attention.”

Russia has repeatedly denied that its massive buildup of troops and military equipment around Ukraine, along with a wave of military exercises, is a precursor to a renewed assault.

In an interview with Russian media on Friday night, Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, said that if it was up to Moscow, “there will be no war. We don’t want wars, but we won’t allow anyone to trample on our interests or ignore them.”

Russian officials are reviewing U.S. and NATO counterproposals on security, submitted last week in answer to Russia’s earlier demands to limit NATO military activity in the former Soviet sphere. Russia has demanded that Ukraine and other former Soviet states be barred from joining the Western military alliance.

Lavrov on Friday described the NATO response as “ideologically motivated” and “permeated with its exceptional role and special mission.”

Western officials have warned that a Russian invasion, potentially similar to its 2014 annexation of Crimea, could come at any time. U.S. intelligence, relying in part on satellite imagery, has found that Russia is massing forces around Ukraine in support of a potential multi-front incursion.

Zelensky said at a news conference Friday that the evidence of an imminent invasion was insufficient, accusing his Western counterparts of inciting “panic.”

Even as he downplayed the threat of an invasion, thousands of civilians across the country are training for the worst. Army reservists — some armed only with wooden replica weapons or those they’ve obtained on their own — receive basic combat training and in a time of war would be under direct command of the Ukrainian military.

Ukrainian citizens also have been trading advice about preparing for war on social media, including under the hashtag #миготові (#weareready).

The United States has requested a meeting of the United Nations Security Council on Monday to discuss Russia’s military buildup, as it pushes for a diplomatic solution to the standoff. Moscow has described the meeting as a “PR stunt,” but U.N. diplomats expressed confidence that any Russian bid to stop the meeting would be voted down, Reuters reported.

President Biden is also due to meet Monday with Qatar’s emir Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad al-Thani as U.S. officials work to shore up alternative energy supplies for Europe, which relies on Russian natural gas exports, in the event Moscow responds to potential sanctions by cutting off supplies.