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While the holding of a meeting between the Russian and American presidents was almost official on Sunday, Moscow announced on Monday that it was “premature” and that a phone call might be enough.
Vladimir Putin (left) and Joe Biden met in Geneva on June 16, 2021.
AFP
This Monday, the Kremlin deemed the holding of a summit between Vladimir Putin and Joe Biden “premature”, dampening the hopes raised by the French announcement the day before on such a meeting, aimed at defusing the danger of a Russian invasion. from Ukraine.
Announced overnight from Sunday to Monday by the French presidency, the agreement in principle on such a summit aimed to reduce tensions, at their height, around Ukraine, the fighting in the east of the country between the army and pro-Russian separatists have worsened over the past three days. Russia is accused of having massed around 150,000 soldiers on the Ukrainian borders, in view of an invasion that Westerners have presented for weeks as imminent. The fear is that Moscow might use an escalation in eastern Ukraine to invade its pro-western neighbour.
“There is an agreement on the fact of having to continue the dialogue at the level of the Ministers of Foreign Affairs.”
“There is an agreement on the fact of having to continue the dialogue at the level of the Ministers of Foreign Affairs. Talking regarding concrete plans for organizing summits is premature,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Monday. According to him, a meeting is possible if Vladimir Putin and Joe Biden deem it “useful”, but the latter can always speak to each other “on the telephone or in another way”.
New Lavrov-Blinken meeting on Thursday
After a day of Emmanuel Macron’s telephone diplomacy, the French presidency announced, overnight from Sunday to Monday, that the Russian and American presidents had each “accepted the principle of such a summit”, specifying that these talks would then be extended to “all stakeholders” in the Ukrainian crisis.
A meeting of the heads of Russian and American diplomacy, Sergei Lavrov and Antony Blinken, is also scheduled for Thursday.
Like Washington, Paris also insisted that a summit might only be held if Russia did not invade Ukraine. However, according to the West, the current fighting in the east might serve as a pretext for Moscow to attack its neighbor. Vladimir Putin is due to chair a meeting of his Security Council, a powerful body which brings together the main Russian decision-makers, in particular the leaders of the army and the intelligence services, at midday on Monday.
The bombings continue…
On the ground Monday in eastern Ukraine, clashes continued, with Kiev reporting 14 shellings by pro-Russian rebels, which injured one soldier. The separatists reported the death of three civilians in the shelling over the past 24 hours, as well as the explosion of an ammunition depot in the Novoazovsk region, accusing “Ukrainian saboteurs” of being responsible. However, this information might not be independently verified.
The authorities of the two self-proclaimed pro-Russian “republics” in eastern Ukraine (Donetsk and Lugansk) have ordered the mobilization of able-bodied men and the evacuation of civilians to Russia. Moscow reported that 61,000 people had been evacuated from the area.
The Kremlin once once more stressed on Monday that the “situation remains extremely tense” on the eastern Ukrainian front, saying it was “worried”. Moscow and Kiev accused each other on Sunday of being responsible for this outbreak of violence in a conflict that has claimed more than 14,000 lives since its outbreak in 2014, in the wake of the annexation of Ukrainian Crimea by Russia. Vladimir Putin and his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky called for stepping up diplomatic efforts to restore a ceasefire. Moscow defends itself from any project of invasion of Ukraine, but demands the promise that the country will never integrate NATO and the end of the expansion of the alliance on its borders, so many requests rejected by the West .
(AFP)
