(NewsNation Now) — President Joe Biden is expected to provide a status update on the ongoing situation in Ukraine at 3:30 p.m. EST Tuesday.
The president is expected to give brief remarks and “will reiterate that the United States remains open to high-level diplomacy in close coordination with our allies, building on the multiple diplomatic off-ramps we and our allies and partners have offered Russia in recent months,” the White House said.
NewsNation will stream the event in the video player at the top of the page.
Russia has massed more than 130,000 troops near Ukraine, sparking the fears of an invasion. Russia denies it has any plans to invade Ukraine, despite placing troops on Ukraine’s borders to the north, south and east and launching massive military drills nearby.
This comes as a cyberattack hit the websites of Ukrainian government agencies and major banks Tuesday, Ukrainian authorities said. The attack, the latest of several hacking operations targeting Ukraine, came after weeks of escalating fears that Russia might invade its neighboring country.
At least 10 Ukrainian websites stopped working due to DDOS attacks, including those of the Defense Ministry, Foreign Ministry, Culture Ministry and Ukraine’s two largest state banks.
The ministry suggested Russia could be behind Tuesday’s incident without providing details. “It is possible that the aggressor resorted to tactics of petty mischief, because his aggressive plans aren’t working overall,” the statement said.
Earlier on Tuesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Moscow is ready for talks with the U.S. and NATO on limits for missile deployments and military transparency.
Speaking after talks with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Putin said the U.S. 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.
They agreed to discuss a range of security measures that Russia had previously proposed.
More U.S. troops are now deploying to Poland, as U.S. officials warn an invasion could begin “at any time” causing “widespread human suffering” in Eastern Europe. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is traveling to the region today to meet with allied defense ministers while the U.S. moves all diplomats out of Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, closing the embassy.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has continued to downplay the Russian threat, at one point Monday joking that the invasion would happen “tomorrow.” U.S. intelligence says the invasion could happen as early as this week.
Biden administration officials have been warning that Russia could execute a “false flag” operation to justify an attack on Ukraine, fabricating a scenario in which Ukraine is the aggressor.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
