© KEYSTONE/AP/Alex Brandon
US Foreign Minister Antony Blinken landed in Kiev on Wednesday morning. He came to show his support for Ukraine in the face of fears of invasion by Russia, according to an AFP journalist.
He must be received during the day in particular by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, before a meeting scheduled for Friday with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov in the hope of defusing the Russian-Western crisis around Ukraine.
While waiting for Moscow’s response to this troika, Antony Blinken is preparing the ground and still trying to find a diplomatic way out, even if the United States is now sounding the alarm in all directions once morest Russia.
“We are at a stage where Russia can launch an attack in Ukraine at any time,” White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said on Tuesday, speaking of an “extremely dangerous situation” shortly before takeoff. ‘Antony Blinken for Europe.
Thursday in Berlin
After his first stop on Wednesday in Kiev, Antony Blinken is expected in Berlin on Thursday for discussions with France, the United Kingdom and Germany on the Ukrainian crisis. Finally, on Friday, Antony Blinken is due to meet his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov in Geneva, to try to renew dialogue with Moscow, despite Washington’s ever more alarmist tone.
Latest episode: Washington expressed concern regarding the possible deployment of nuclear weapons in Belarus, a neighboring country of Ukraine. If Moscow takes action in Ukraine, “no option is excluded” on the American side, warned Jen Psaki, questioned both on the very strategic Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline leading to Germany, and on an exclusion of Russia from “Swift”, an essential system of international banking exchanges.
At the end of last week, Washington had already accused Moscow of having sent agents to Ukraine to carry out “sabotage” operations in order to create a “pretext” for an invasion. The head of Canadian diplomacy Mélanie Joly, who preceded Antony Blinken in Kiev this week, clearly invoked the need to stand “at the side of Ukraine” once morest Russia, which “is the aggressor”.
London, for its part, announced the shipment of weapons, such as anti-tank missiles, to Ukraine, while Kiev was rightly complaining regarding the lack of eagerness of the West to strengthen their military aid.
Russian requirements
Russia on Tuesday called for “concrete” answers to its demands before any new talks on Ukraine.
In addition to a treaty banning any enlargement of NATO, in particular to Ukraine and Georgia, another former Soviet republic, Moscow is demanding that the Americans and their allies give up organizing military maneuvers and deployments in Eastern Europe.
Negotiations last week in Geneva, Brussels and Vienna have so far only made it possible to note the gap separating Moscow from the West. Russia denies any belligerent ambition in Ukraine, says it is threatened by the strengthening of NATO in the region and assures that its thousands of soldiers on the Ukrainian border are not a threat.
In response to a pro-Western revolution in Ukraine, Russia already annexed Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula in 2014 and is widely seen as the military sponsor of pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine, the scene of a war since almost eight years.
