Ukraine crisis: Joe Biden says 'every indication' Russia prepared to invade.

US President Joe Biden warns that Russia could still invade Ukraine within days and Russia expelled the No. 2 diplomat at the US Embassy in Moscow, as tensions flared anew in the worst East-West standoff in decades.

Nato allies accused Russia of misleading the world by saying it was returning some troops to their bases but instead moved in thousands of new ones.

The pullout pledge was among Russian gestures this week that briefly cooled temperatures.Russia is believed to have some 150,000 military forces around Ukraine's borders, raising fears of a new war in Europe.

Tensions also spiked along the line that separates Ukrainian forces from Russia-backed separatists in the country's east, with both sides accusing each other of intensive shelling in a long-simmering conflict that has killed 14,000 people.In a surprise blow to diplomacy, Russia ordered the deputy chief of mission at the US Embassy in Moscow, Bart Gorman, to leave the country, The State Department said. It called the move "unprovoked" and "an escalatory step". Russia did not say why he was expelled.Doubts escalated in the West over what exactly Russia is doing with its troops around Ukraine — including an estimated 60 per cent of the overall Russian ground forces — and about President Vladimir Putin's overall intentions.US Secretary of State Antony Blinken went before the UN Security Council and described in detail the range of false-flag attacks that Washington believes Moscow might stage to justify invasion.He described any invasion unfolding with barrages of missiles and bombs, cyberattacks, followed by Russian troops advancing on "key targets that have already been identified and mapped out", although he did not elaborate on evidence of that.

Russia's intended targets included Kyiv, with its nearly three million inhabitants, Blinken said."Specific groups of people" were also planned targets of any Russian invasion, he said.

"We are laying it out in great detail with the hope that by sharing what we know with the world, we can influence Russia to advance the path of war, and choose a different [path] while there's still