Biden tells Ohio audience he is returning to DC because of ‘a little thing going on in Europe right now’

President is returning to Washington amid heightened tensions with Moscow over Ukraine

President Joe Biden on Thursday cut short a trip to Ohio so he could return to the White House amid the growing crisis over Russia’s imminent invasion of Ukraine.

Mr Biden was delivering remarks to a group of supporters and state and local officials in Cleveland, Ohio when he told the crowd he was making a swift exit because of weather en route to Washington.

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“And there’s a little thing going on in Europe right now,” he added, referring to the standoff between Moscow, Washington, and the European Union over the 150,000 troops Russia has encamped along Ukraine’s Eastern frontier.

Earlier in the day, Mr Biden told reporters outside the White House that the risk of a Russian invasion was “very high” because Russia had added to the massive buildup of forces, rather than withdraw them as they had professed to be doing earlier in the week.

He also said the US “has reason to believe” that Russia is “engaged in a false flag operation to have an excuse to go in,” referring to the shelling of a kindergarten in Ukraine’s Donbass separatist region, which Ukrainian President Volodmyr Zelensky attributed to Russian-backed separatists on Thursday.

Speaking at the United Nations Security Council on Thursday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said a Russian invasion of Ukraine will begin with Russia implementing plans to “manufacture a pretext for its attack”.

“This could be a violent event that Russia will blame on Ukraine, or an outrageous accusation that Russia will level against the Ukrainian government. We don't know exactly the form it will take,” he said. “It could be a fabricated so-called terrorist bombing inside Russia, the invented discovery of a mass grave, a staged drone strike against civilians, or a fake — even a real attack —using chemical weapons”.

Mr Blinken’s comments came just hours after Russia’s expulsion of Bartle Gorman, the deputy chief of the US mission in Moscow.