Russia-Ukraine updates: US to ban Russian carriers from its airspace

President Joe Biden announced additional sanctions on Wednesday impacting Nord Stream 2 AG, the company in charge of building Nord Stream 2, the massive natural gas pipeline connecting Russia to Germany's Baltic coast.

"Yesterday, after further close consultations between our two governments, Germany announced that it would halt certification of the pipeline. Today, I have directed my administration to impose sanctions on Nord Stream 2 AG and its corporate officers," Biden said in a statement.

Biden said he had directed his administration to sanction Nord Stream 2 AG, as well as the firm's corporate officers.

The Biden administration had held off sanctioning the company, holding the threat of sanctions as leverage.

The president said this move was part of the "initial tranche of sanctions" that he first announced and began to roll out on Tuesday.

-ABC News' Ben Gittleson

About 80% of Russian forces amassed around Ukraine are in what the Pentagon calls "forward positions" and are "ready to go" if given the order to invade, a senior defense official said Wednesday.

The official said the U.S. has not seen Russian troops breaking out from the two separatist republics in eastern Ukraine but added that the U.S. is operating under the assumption that Russia has, indeed, sent more troops into the separatist-controlled area of Donbas.

“We have we have been saying any day now, and it is certainly possible that today is that day," the official said. "They could go at any hour now."

While the official said it still appears Russia is preparing for a large-scale invasion, they added, "If ever we want to be wrong, we want to be wrong about this."

-ABC News' Matt Seyler and Luis Martinez

Asked by ABC News Chief White House Correspondent Cecilia Vega on what the U.S. could do if sanctions imposed Tuesday don’t work, White House press secretary Jen Psaki laid out additional sanctions that the U.S. could still impose.

“Sanctions can take a number of formats, right?” Psaki said at Tuesday's press briefing. “Export controls is certainly one of them. There's many more sanctions that we have at our disposal. Swift, the SWIFT system is obviously significant, not in the first tranche, but there's a range of options that remain on the table for sanctions.”

While the U.S. said Tuesday that cutting Russia off from the international SWIFT financial system was still an option, it’s conceivable the Russians could find a way around SWIFT and move to other less-regulated payments systems.

Psaki also said sanctions are not intended to have "the harshest impact on the first day" but are "designed to have a squeezing impact over the course of time and we have many more escalatory steps that we could take.”

The top White House official crafting U.S. sanctions on Russia, Daleep Singh, also told reporters that the U.S. wasn't seeking to "max out on sanctions" but that "they're meant to prevent and deter a large-scale invasion of Ukraine that could involve the seizure of major cities, including Kyiv."

Psaki echoed Biden in saying that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s speech to the Russian people on Monday “was rife with historical inaccuracy” and that Putin “made clear that he does not view Ukraine, not just the areas he recognized yesterday, but that the totality of Ukraine as an independent country.”

Notably, Biden did not mention personally targeting Putin on Tuesday, which he had previously said he was considering.

-ABC News' Ben Gittelson, Zunaira Zaki and Elizabeth Schultze

While President Joe Biden has made clear he is not considering sending U.S. troops into Ukraine, having said it would lead to war, a group of lawmakers sent him a letter late Tuesday to remind him that he must get authorization from Congress before he decides to engage the military in Ukraine.

The bipartisan oddball group of lawmakers who signed the letter includes Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, D-N.Y., Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Florida, and Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., among about three dozen others.

"If the ongoing situation compels you to introduce the brave men and women of our military into Ukraine, their lives would inherently be put at risk of Russia chooses to invade," read the letter, which Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., shared on Twitter. "Therefore, we ask that your decisions comport with the Constitution and our nation's laws by consulting with Congress to receive authorization before any such development."

Lawmakers wrote that the War Powers Resolution of 1973 has been abused by previous presidents, and they noted that the act restricted Biden from not only engaging troops in battle but also from launching a "pre-emptive strike."

"Congress stands ready to deliberate over the potentially monumental implications of such scenarios," they said.

-ABC News' Mariam Khan