(NewsNation Now) — As the military conflict in Ukraine enters Day Two, many are wondering, When will it end?
The invasion began shortly after dawn on Thursday, after Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale attack on Ukraine from three sides. A series of missile attacks were launched near Kyiv, combined with the use of long-range artillery against the city of Kharkiv, near the Russian border.
However, NewsNation’s Leland Vittert said that’s only one thing Americans need to be concerned about.
“What’s most concerning right now is how things could potentially get out of control.”
According to Vittert, Putin seems to have his eyes set on the western part of Ukraine, particularly near the town of Lviv, which is about 43 miles from Poland’s border. It’s also where U.S. Army soldiers are deployed to reassure NATO allies and deter Russian aggression.
“And you can imagine just how quickly a Russian fighter jet … that perhaps gets lit up by a US Patriot missile battery in Poland, it takes a wrong turn and it flies over the Polish border, Vittert said. The Patriot missile battery shoots it down and now all of a sudden, you have Russia and the United States involved in combat.”
The U.S. and its allies have responded to Moscow’s latest move with new sanctions and threatened even more crippling penalties in case of an all-out invasion, including tough financial restrictions and draconian bans on technology imports. But Putin shrugged off the threats and said that Washington would inevitably ramp up sanctions anyway to contain Russia.
“The backing of the United States and the Europeans is quite profound in words, and very, very lacking in terms of concrete actions that are going to probably have any real effect on changing the course of what Vladimir Putin is thinking,” Vittert said.
The penalties announced Thursday fall in line with the White House’s insistence that it would hit Russia’s financial system and Putin’s inner circle, while also imposing export controls that would aim to starve Russia’s industries and military of U.S. semiconductors and other high-tech products.
But Biden, for now, held off imposing some of the most severe potential sanctions, including sanctioning Putin directly, but also of cutting Russia out of the SWIFT payment system, which allows for the transfers of money from bank to bank around the globe.
Biden was asked by reporters, why not sanction Putin directly, at the White House on Thursday.
“No one expected the sanctions to prevent anything from happening,” Biden said. “It has to — it’s going to take time, and we have to show resolve. So he knows what is coming. And so the people of Russia know what he’s brought on them.”
Vittert said if Biden doesn’t step up to the plate, Putin will continue to go further.
“If invading a fellow democracy and bombing, it doesn’t get you personally sanctioned, what does? If the President United States says don’t do something, and you go ahead and do it, and there is no severe and overwhelming consequences that bring you to your knees, then the emperor has no clothes. The threat of the United States no longer sets the rules on the world stage on balance anger.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says 137 civilians and military personnel have been killed so far in the Russian invasion of his country.