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President Joe Biden said Wednesday he thinks Russia will invade Ukraine and warned President Vladimir Putin that his country would pay a “dear price” in lives lost and a possible cutoff from the global banking system if it does, Associated Press reported.

Biden, speaking at a news conference to mark his one-year anniversary in office, also said a “minor incursion” by Russia would elicit a lesser response. He later sought to clarify that he was referring to a non-military action, such as a cyberattack, that would be met with a similar reciprocal response, and that if Russian forces cross the Ukrainian border, killing Ukrainian fighters, “that changes everything.”

But the comments also hinted at the challenge of keeping the United States and its NATO allies united in their response to Russia. In explaining the minor incursion remark, he said “it’s very important that we keep everyone in NATO on the same page.”

The news conference came at a critical moment in Europe as Russia has amassed 100,000 troops near the Ukrainian border and a series of talks in Europe last week failed to ease tensions. Secretary of State Antony Blinken will meet with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Geneva on Friday. On Wednesday, Blinken met with Ukraine’s president in Kyiv and he heads to Berlin on Thursday for talks with allies.

Biden reiterated that he did not think that Putin has made a final decision on whether to invade, but speculated “my guess is he will move in.”

Even after he sought to clarify his comments about a potential NATO response to a “minor incursion” by Russia, the White House moved quickly to make clear that Biden was not telegraphing to Putin that the U.S. would tolerate some military action against Ukraine.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki noted that the Russians could turn to an “extensive playbook of aggression short of military action, including cyberattacks and paramilitary tactics.”

“President Biden has been clear with the Russian President: If any Russian military forces move across the Ukrainian border, that’s a renewed invasion, and it will be met with a swift, severe, and united response from the United States and our Allies,” Psaki said in a statement.

As the White House did cleanup, Biden faced a barrage of criticism over the “minor incursion” remark.

“This is the wrong way to view this threat,” said Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, who was part of a bipartisan congressional delegation that traveled to Kyiv over the weekend to meet with Ukrainian officials. “Any incursion by the Russian military into Ukraine should be viewed as a major incursion because it will destabilize Ukraine and freedom-loving countries in Eastern Europe.”

Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., said Biden effectively “gave Putin a green light to invade Ukraine by yammering about the supposed insignificance of a ‘minor incursion.’”

“He projected weakness, not strength,” Sasse said.

If Russia invades, Biden said, one action under consideration was limiting Russian transactions in U.S. financial institutions, including “anything that involves dollar denominations.” Biden was referring to potentially limiting Russia’s access to “dollar clearing” — the conversion of payments by banks on behalf of clients into U.S. dollars from rubles or other foreign currency, according to a senior administration official who was not authorized to comment publicly.

The U.S. president said he believes the decision will “solely” be Putin’s and suggested he was not fully confident that the Russian officials with whom top White House advisers have been negotiating are fully informed about Putin’s thinking.

“There’s a question of whether the people they’re talking to know what he’s going to do,” Biden said.

Ukraine, meanwhile, said it was prepared for the worst and would survive whatever difficulties come its way. The president urged the country not to panic.

Russian military activity has been increasing in recent weeks, but the U.S. has not concluded whether Putin plans to invade or whether the show of force is intended to squeeze the security concessions without an actual conflict.

Biden, who spoke with Putin twice last month, said he’s made it clear to him that Russia would face severe sanctions. Still, he said the decision for Putin could come down to “what side of the bed” he wakes up on.

“He’s never seen sanctions like the ones I promised will be imposed if he moves, No. 1,” Biden warned. “This is not all just a cake walk for Russia,” Biden said. “They’ll pay a stiff price immediately” and in the medium and long term “if they do it.”

In Kyiv, Blinken reiterated Washington’s demands for Russia to de-escalate the situation by removing its forces from the border area, something that Moscow has flatly refused to do. And, Blinken said he wouldn’t give Russia the written response it expects to its security demands when he and Lavrov meet in Geneva.

Meanwhile, a top Russian diplomat said Moscow would not back down from its insistence that the U.S. formally ban Ukraine from ever joining NATO and reduce its and the alliance’s military presence in Eastern Europe. Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said Moscow had no intention of invading Ukraine but that its demands for security guarantees were non-negotiable.

The U.S. and its allies have said the Russian demands are non-starters, that Russia knows they are and that Putin is using them in part to create a pretext for invading Ukraine, which has strong ethnic and historical ties to Russia. The former Soviet republic aspires to join the alliance, though has little hope of doing so in the foreseeable future.

Blinken urged Western nations to remain united in the face of Russian aggression. He also reassured Ukraine’s leader of NATO support while calling for Ukrainians to stand strong.

Blinken told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy that the U.S. and its allies were steadfast in backing his country and its democratic aspirations against Russian attempts to incite division and discord through “relentless aggression.”

“Our strength depends on preserving our unity and that includes unity within Ukraine,” he told Zelenskyy. “I think one of Moscow’s long-standing goals has been to try to sow divisions between and within our countries, and quite simply we cannot and will not let them do that.”

The Biden administration had said earlier it was providing an additional $200 million in defensive military aid to Ukraine. Blinken said more assistance is coming and that it would only increase should Russia invade.

Washington and its allies have kept the door open to possible further talks on arms control and confidence-building measures to reduce the potential for hostilities.

Ryabkov insisted, however, that there can’t be any meaningful talks on those issues if the West doesn’t heed the main Russian requests for the non-expansion of NATO with a formal response. He said the Russian demands are “a package, and we’re not prepared to divide it into different parts, to start processing some of those at the expense of standing idle on others.”

Blinken, though, said no such formal response was coming. “I won’t be presenting a paper at that time to Foreign Minister Lavrov,” he said. “We need to see where we are and see if there remain opportunities to pursue the diplomacy and pursue the dialogue.”

The first elections of local governments in 2017 to be held under the new constitution were mostly smooth even though they had to be conducted in multiple phases to accommodate Madhes-based parties. Initially, due to reservations over the constitution, they were reluctant to join the electoral process.

In a sense, the 2017 elections were a story of stability and contributed to deepening democracy at the grassroots. The tenure of local governments elected in 2017 expires on 19 May 2022, and there are doubts over timely elections. The Election Commission (EC) has proposed April 27 as the election date. If the ruling parties are committed to timely elections, the government needs to announce a date this week: the commission needs at least 120 days for preparations.

Major parties are under pressure not to create a vacuum at the local level. Until two weeks ago, some members of the coalition were reluctant to hold timely elections. Following widespread pressure, their tone and tenor have changed. A meeting of the ruling coalition on January 18 committed to local level elections as per the constitutional and legal provisions. But the commitment meant different things to different parties. 

The Local Level Election Act (2017) says there should be no vacuum at the local level and elections must be completed before the expiry of the local bodies’ tenure, which contradicts the constitution which says elections can be held within six months of the expiry of term. The commission decided to follow the Act to forestall a possible political vacuum in local governments. But some parties are trying to delay elections, arguing that the constitution should prevail over other laws.

So, despite their commitment, there is still no surety of timely elections to forestall a vacuum. Until now, only two parties—Nepali Congress and CPN-UML—are clear that elections must be held by April. Initially, Congress Chief and Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba was in favor of federal parliament elections. But now Deuba thinks holding local level elections first would allow him to stay in power for another year and half at the least.

Also read: Ruling coalition agrees to hold local level elections in April

If parliamentary elections are held first there could be a change in government leadership and NC could be denied a chance at holding local elections, says a leader close to the PM. So Deuba is putting pressure on coalition partners to agree to timely local elections. NC calculates that the split in CPN-UML could work to its advantage.

The civil society is cautioning political parties on possible political vacuum at the local level. PM Deuba is cautious about his image and does not want to take the blame for derailing the democratic process at the local level, something he has communicated to coalition partners. Historically, Deuba has been blamed for making local bodies defunct after 2002 when he was also the prime minister. The tenures of local representatives had ended that year.

At the time, a legal provision allowed the local bodies’ tenure to be extended by a year but Deuba still choose to end their terms and hand over local leadership to unelected civil servants. But he could not hold elections due to the raging Maoist insurgency. Deuba does not want to repeat the mistake in the final years of his political career. Similarly, the main opposition UML also wants timely elections. But will Duba’s coalition partners CPN (Maoist Center) and CPN (Unified Socialist) agree?

The two parties want to buy time to strengthen their organizations. They fear that if they fare poorly in local elections, their national election campaigns could also be affected. Maoist Center and Unified Socialist seek an electoral alliance. “An alliance among coalition partners is a condition for holding three-tier elections,” says Ganga Lal Tuladhar, deputy general secretary of Unified Socialist.

In the 2017 elections, of 753 local governments, UML won 297, Congress 274, CPN (Maoist Center) 107, and the remaining parties won 76 seats. After the UML split, around 10 percent of its elected representatives deserted to the new Unified Socialist led by former Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal. By holding local elections first, NC wants to benefit from the UML split.

Also read: Rural municipalities, municipalities urge government to fix date of local level elections pronto

Maoist Center and Unified Socialist are not opposed to local elections but they want to exploit the constitutional provision to buy time.

As per this plan, there will be a political vacuum at the local level after May 19. Unified Socialist leaders say election dates should be announced only after harmonizing Local Elections Act and constitutional provisions. There are also voices that the local level vacuum would facilitate free and fair federal and provincial elections, as incumbent local government heads could otherwise misuse their offices to influence voters.

If the parties stick to constitutional provisions, April elections are unlikely. Says Maoist leader Dev Gurung, in principle, parties have agreed to hold local elections within the framework of constitution and relevant laws. “But the confusion over the constitution and the laws should be first settled to clear the way for elections,” says Gurung.

Some in the ruling coalition want November local elections, taking advantage of the constitution’s leeway. The ruling parties may also use the third Covid-19 wave as an excuse to postpone elections. In a ruling coalition meeting on January 19, some leaders had advised PM Deuba to analyze the pandemic before announcing elections. But virologists say April elections should not be affected.

Says virologist Sher Bahadur Pun, the third wave triggered by the new Omicron variant is unlikely to remain active by April even though the situation may not be completely under control. “The experiences of South Africa and other countries suggest infections will go down after four weeks. In Nepal, too, cases will start to decrease after two or three weeks,” he says.

On the face of the third wave, parties have limited their activities. Experts say Covid-19 cannot be used as an excuse to delay elections. In India, even amid the Covid-19 crisis, the country is holding state assembly elections in Manipur, Uttarakhand, Punjab, and Goa in February. So Covid-19 should not hinder elections in Nepal as well.

Timely local elections will also allow for timely polls to national parliament and federal assemblies. But first there needs to be consensus among political parties on election dates.

“Election laws that contradict the constitution must be amended before announcing elections, for which the parliament should be allowed to operate unhindered,” says Tuladhar.

Political brief

Amid growing tensions with Russia, American Secretary of State Antony Blinken is travelling to Ukraine and Germany this week.

In Kyiv, Blinken will meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba "to reinforce the United States' commitment to Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity," Ned Price, State Department spokesman Ned Price said.

In Berlin, Blinken will "discuss recent diplomatic engagements with Russia and joint efforts to deter further Russian aggression against Ukraine, including Allies' and partners' readiness to impose massive consequences and severe economic costs on Russia."

Blinken will meet with German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, followed by a meeting with the Transatlantic Quad, which also includes the UK and France, according to Price. Last week, there was a diplomatic talk between American and Russian officials which did not yield any results.