- A Sunday CBS report claims U.S. intelligence found Putin has already given orders for Russian troops to invade Ukraine
- Pentagon Chief Lloyd Austin said that Putin is poised for a 'successful invasion'
- Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the Russian threat is 'dead serious'
- He still plans to meet with Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov this week to try and find a diplomatic path forward
- 'It's my responsibility to do everything I can to try diplomatically to prevent a war,' Blinken told NBC's Meet the Press on Sunday
- Blinken said if the meeting goes forward with Lavrov it means there's still time to divert war, but if it doesn't that means war is already underway
'The intelligence says that Russian troops have actually received orders now to proceed with the invasion,' CBS News' David Martin told Face the Nation host Margaret Brennan.
'So not only are they moving up closer and closer to the border and to these attack positions, but the commanders on the ground are making specific plans for how they would maneuver in their sector of the battlefield,' he added.
'They're doing everything that American commanders would do once they got the order to proceed.'
Martin's revelation comes after President Joe Biden said Friday that he is very certain that Putin has already made up his mind that he will attack Ukraine based on D.C's 'significant intelligence capability.'
Meanwhile, America's top foreign affairs officials warned Sunday that Putin's moves show that Russia is 'dead serious' about invading Ukraine, but insist there likely won't be a threat to U.S. troops.
'He's assembled the kinds of things that you would need to conduct a successful invasion,' Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told ABC's Martha Raddatz of Putin in an interview tapped in Ukraine.
'Are you absolutely confident in the intelligence you're seeing now?' Raddatz asked Austin.
'We have high confidence in the things that we're looking at,' he responded.
'Of course, in terms of being able to predict exactly what's going to happen going forward, you never can,' he said, adding that the Pentagon is 'looking at every possibility.'
Austin said that it's 'highly likely' if Russia invades Ukraine, there will be swift movement for Moscow to try and take the capital city of Kyiv.
'You could see a significant amount of combat power move very quickly to take Kyiv,' he claimed.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...y-threat-Russian-invasion-deadly-serious.html
