| Good morning, Early Birds. What are we missing out there? Tips: earlytips@washpost.com. Thanks for waking up with us. | | |  | At the White House | | White House prepares new Russia sanctions as Putin sends in troops |  Russian President Vladimir Putin appears on a screen at the White House briefing room, as he signed documents recognizing separatist areas of Ukraine as independent, in Washington on Feb. 21. (Joshua Roberts/Reuters) | | | Has Russia invaded Ukraine? Russian President Vladimir Putin's decision on Monday to send troops into two separatist-controlled regions of Ukraine has forced the White House to wrestle with whether the move constituted the invasion President Biden has warned of — and if so, what to do about it. There's a lot riding on the rhetorical distinction. After he took flak last month for speculating about a potential "minor incursion" by Russia into Ukrainian territory, Biden spelled out exactly what would trigger the brutal sanctions he'd promised if Putin attacked Ukraine. "Any assembled Russian units move across the Ukrainian border, that is an invasion," Biden told reporters. Such a move, he added, would bring a "severe and coordinated economic response." The White House is expected to announce new sanctions on Russia today, according to a senior administration official, but it's unclear whether they'll constitute the devastating package the administration had promised if Russia attacked, a more limited set of measures, or somewhere in between. The administration is coordinating with allies on the announcement, the official said. | | Some Democratic lawmakers are urging Biden to impose sanctions sooner rather than later. If any more "Russian troops or proxy forces cross into Donbas" — the eastern Ukrainian region that Russian troops entered on Monday — "the Biden administration and our European allies must not hesitate in imposing crushing sanctions," Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in a statement on Monday night. A Menendez spokesperson clarified that he was referring to areas of the Donbas that have been controlled for years by Russian-backed forces as well as those under Ukrainian government control. Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), a member of the Foreign Relations Committee who's close to Biden, said in a statement of his own that the time "to impose significant costs on President Putin and the Kremlin starts now." "Russia has invaded Ukraine," Michael McFaul, who served as U.S. ambassador to Russia during the Obama administration, told The Early. "And instead of saving their powder and waiting for the giant military invasion to launch sanctions, I don't [understand] why you wouldn't launch those sanctions now. Because it's happened. So what are you waiting for?" | Troop deployment not necessarily "a new step" | | It's not clear whether the administration agrees with Menendez or not. A senior administration official told reporters on Monday that "Russian troops moving into Donbas would not itself be a new step," since Russian forces have been active in the separatist region since 2014. The administration planned to monitor what Russia did overnight and "respond to any actions that Russia takes in a way that we believe is appropriate to the action," the official said. "After the call, a different administration official defined a Russian invasion that would prompt a clear U.S. response as crossing into Ukrainian territory that Russia has 'not occupied since 2014,'" as our colleague Ashley Parker reports. | "This is exactly sort of the scenario that we were concerned about" | | Biden signed an executive order on Monday afternoon prohibiting Americans from investing in or trading with the Ukrainian regions controlled by Russian-backed separatists, but several Russia experts said they didn't expect those measures to have too much effect. | | "I almost wish they wouldn't have come out with that," said Heather Conley, a former deputy assistant secretary of state in George W. Bush's administration who's now president of the German Marshall Fund of the United States. "This is exactly sort of the scenario that we were concerned about," she added. "That there would be something that would be sort of overanalyzed — Is this what this means? Is that what that means? — and it would demonstrate hesitancy or lack of clarity. Unfortunately, it sounds like we are at that moment." Steven Pifer, a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine who's now a fellow at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation, said he hoped Putin's moves on Monday called for aggressive sanctions, even if it doesn't go as far as the severe ones Biden promised to implement if Putin launched a full invasion. "It may not be the full load that they planned to hit Russia with had tanks rolled across the borders of Belarus, from Crimea and from" Russia itself, Pifer said. "But I think that there needs at this point to be some significant pain inflicted on Russia." Still, other Russia hands are advocating for a more measured approach. For years, Russian troops have moved freely in the Crimea — which Russia annexed in 2014 but which the U.S. and most of the rest of the world consider part of Ukraine — and Russia's movement of troops into separatist-controlled areas of the Donbas doesn't change much on the ground, said Thomas Graham, a former National Security Council senior director for Russia in the Bush White House who's now a distinguished fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He urged Biden to wait to impose crippling sanctions. "That's got to be reserved for movement into Ukrainian-controlled territory," he said. | Putin questions Ukraine's statehood in televised address |  Demonstrators holding a huge Ukrainian flag march along the street in Odessa, Ukraine, on Sunday, Feb. 20. (Emilio Morenatti/Ap Photo) | | - "With a conviction of an authoritarian unburdened by historical nuance, Putin declared Ukraine an invention of the Bolshevik revolutionary leader, Vladimir Lenin, who he said had mistakenly endowed Ukraine with a sense of statehood by allowing it autonomy within the newly created Soviet state."
- "Modern Ukraine was entirely and fully created by Russia, more specifically the Bolshevik, communist Russia," Putin said. "This process began practically immediately after the 1917 revolution, and moreover Lenin and his associates did it in the sloppiest way in relation to Russia — by dividing, tearing from her pieces of her own historical territory."
- "As a misreading of history, it was extreme even by the standards of Putin, a former K.G.B. officer who has declared the Soviet Union's collapse the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century."
| | "The history and culture of Russia and Ukraine are indeed intertwined — they share the same Orthodox Christian religion, and their languages, customs and national cuisines are related." | - "But the happy brotherhood of nations that Putin likes to paint, with Ukraine fitted snuggly into the fabric of a greater Russia, is dubious."
| | |  | From the courts | | Sen. Durbin is determined to make history and confirm Biden's Supreme Court pick | - "That job, helping answer mail for legendary Sen. Paul H. Douglas of Illinois, helped launch Durbin's six-decade political career. Now, after nearly 40 years of congressional service, Durbin is finally about to make his star turn on the Senate's biggest stage."
- "The 77-year-old Democrat will hold the gavel when the Senate Judiciary Committee holds hearings as soon as next month on Biden's forthcoming nominee to succeed retiring Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer."
| | "In a wide-ranging interview ahead of the nomination, which Biden has pledged to make this month, Durbin said he was determined to run a thorough but efficient vetting process, one that could pave the way for a bipartisan confirmation. He also made clear that the confirmation would represent a capstone moment in a long, storied career." | - "Personally, it's the reason I ran the first time for office," Durbin told our colleagues. "I want to be smack dab in the middle of, as Oliver Wendell Holmes said, the actions and passions of our time, and I couldn't ask for a better seat than to be chair of Judiciary filling a Supreme Court vacancy."
- Here's where things stand: "Biden began the interview process for his Supreme Court nomination in recent days," a person familiar with the process told the Wall Street Journal's Ken Thomas.
| | |  | The Data | | | Ukraine's cultural divide, visualized: "The Donbas region in eastern Ukraine has been a flash point in the escalating crisis between Russia and Ukraine, which hinges on land borders and strategic influence," our colleague Sammy Westfall reports. | - "The region became even more critical Monday as Putin recognized the independence of two Moscow-backed breakaway enclaves there that call themselves the Donetsk People's Republic and Luhansk People's Republic. The action is a considerable escalation that signals an end to the seven-year peace deal known as the Minsk agreement. It's also seen as one that could give the Russian leader a pretext to invade Ukraine."
- "Putin has described Russians and Ukrainians as one people, writing in an essay shared on the Kremlin's website in July that 'true sovereignty of Ukraine is possible only in partnership with Russia.'"
- "The most recent official census, in 2001, found that more than half of the population in Crimea and Donetsk identified Russian as their native language. Separatist rebels have capitalized on Donbas's distinctive regional identity to fuel support and rebellion against Kyiv. Moscow, too, has used this identity, and further laid the groundwork for it by issuing passports, as a pretext to send in forces to 'defend' people."
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