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

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi referred to Russian President Vladimir Putin as a "tyrant" on Wednesday and defended President Joe Biden's handling of the crisis in Ukraine.

"This is the same tyrant who attacked our democracy in 2016," Pelosi said during her weekly press briefing. "This is the same tyrant who is opposed to democracy and wants to minimize, trivialize it, to downgrade it in the eyes of the Russian people." 

While Biden has faced political attacks from some Republicans who argue U.S. sanctions do not go far enough, Pelosi called the president's actions "appropriate." 

"This is a unified effort by our allies in the NATO alliance. And what was proposed was what was agreed to in terms of timing," she said.

ABC News' senior congressional correspondent Rachel Scott asked Pelosi and other lawmakers if they believe the sanctions announced by the administration Tuesday were enough to deter Putin.

"I think the sanctions are going to just continue to increase and we'll have an ultimately crippling impact on many sectors of the Russian economy," Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., responded.

Pelosi added that Russia hasn't seen the "depth" of the sanctions take hold yet. 

"Putin is probably the richest man in the world," Pelosi said. "Follow the money. That's what's the sanctions are about."

-ABC News' Mariam Khan

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