February 14 2022 was a relative quiet day. The U.S. knew that the Ukraine would soon launch a large attack on the renegade Dontezk and Luhansk republics. To protect the Russian people living there the Russian Federation would have to invade Ukraine. The White Hose continued to warn of a upcoming 'Russian invasion' that the upcoming Ukrainian actions would provoke.
The Washington Post reported on a war planing group in the White House. The preparations had been going on for quite a while:
As fears grow of potential Russian aggression against Ukraine, a “Tiger Team” led by the White House is quietly gaming out how the United States would respond to a range of jarring scenarios, from a limited show of force to a full-scale, mass-casualty invasion.
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The Tiger Team was officially born in November, when national security adviser Jake Sullivan asked Alex Bick, the NSC director for strategic planning, to lead a planning effort across multiple agencies. Bick has brought in the Departments of Defense, State, Energy, Treasury and Homeland Security, along with the U.S. Agency for International Development to look at a possible humanitarian crisis.The intelligence community is also involved, gaming out various courses of action the Russians might pursue and the risks and advantages of each, officials said.
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This planning has been underway even as other agencies push ahead with their own preparations. The Treasury Department has crafted potential sanctions packages and the Pentagon has planned for additional troop deployments at the same time the White House was finalizing its playbook.Among the Tiger Team’s top concerns is a Russian effort to promote the false narrative that it is Ukraine, aided by the West, that is preparing to launch an offensive in eastern Ukraine, and that Russia is the victim.
We will see over the next days who really launched the attack.
The Kremlin was still not convinced that a war would come:
In a meeting in the Kremlin, the foreign minister Sergei Lavrov told Putin he believed there was still room for dialogue on Russian requests for a new security deal with the west, which have been made as Russia amassed 140,000 troops around Ukraine’s borders in recent weeks.
“It seems to me that our possibilities are far from being exhausted. They certainly should not continue indefinitely. But at this stage I would suggest that they continue and be intensified,” Lavrov told Putin.
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“We warn against endless conversations on issues that need to be resolved today. Still, as the foreign minister, I should say that there is always a chance,” said Lavrov.At the same time, a senior Russian diplomat told the Guardian that Russia would be within its rights to “counterattack” against Ukraine if it felt Kyiv was threatening the population of eastern Ukraine.
“We will not invade Ukraine unless we are provoked to do that,” said Vladimir Chizhov, Russia’s ambassador to the EU, in an interview in Brussels.
“If the Ukrainians launch an attack against Russia, you shouldn’t be surprised if we counterattack. Or, if they start blatantly killing Russian citizens anywhere – Donbas or wherever,” he said.
There was diplomacy going on with a phone call between president Joe Biden and the British premier Boris Johnson. The German chancellor Olaf Scholz was in Kiev to try to stop the upcoming war. It was way too late.
The OSCE Special Observer Mission at the ceasefire line in east-Ukraine reported of February 14 that the front was again unusually quit:
In Donetsk region, the Mission recorded 17 ceasefire violations, including one explosion. In the previous 24 hours, it recorded 157 ceasefire violations in the region.
In Luhansk region, the SMM recorded 157 ceasefire violations, including 40 explosions. 80 of the ceasefire violations were assessed as a live-fire exercise outside the security zone. In the previous 24 hours, it recorded 80 ceasefire violations in the region.
There was a notable observation of a Ukrainian tank concentration:
In violation of withdrawal lines, the Mission observed 22 tanks in a government-controlled area and one mortar in a non-government-controlled area of Luhansk region.
That was an unusually large number of Ukrainian T-72s near Pidlisne, 70km north-west of Luhansk.
The observed numbers of ceasefire violations and explosion were less than the average of the last 7 and 30 day periods as well as less than the daily average in all of 2021. The concentration of explosions south of Sadovyi (non-government-controlled, 57km south-west of Luhansk) was assessed to be from a live exercise. It is marked by the orange point on the Luhansk Donetsk boarder line.
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