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US President Joe Biden has urged his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, to ease tensions in a phone call Thursday (December 30th).
The call came amid tensions near the Ukrainian-Russian border.
During the 50-minute call, the leaders had a serious exchange to lay the groundwork for talks early next month.
So said an official from the Biden administration, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of sensitive diplomatic issues.
US and Russian officials will meet on January 9 and 10 in Geneva, Switzerland, to discuss arms control and rising tensions over Ukraine as part of their bilateral Strategic Stability dialogue.
Then, a special Russia-NATO Council meeting will be held in Brussels on January 12, followed a day later by a meeting in Vienna within the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), involving the United States. , its European allies, Ukraine and Russia.
“Biden saw this call as laying the groundwork for g pragmatic and result-oriented diplomacy,” he said at future meetings, the senior US official said.
Russia earlier this month demanded that NATO provide comprehensive security guarantees as it rallied about 100,000 troops on its border with Ukraine, sparking fears of an invasion and a diplomatic storm, including another call between the two leaders on December 7.
Russia is seeking legal guarantees that NATO will not accept new members bordering Russia, including Ukraine and Georgia. It also wants NATO to halt military exercises near its borders and reduce military deployments in Central and Eastern Europe.
Putin last week called on the West to “immediately” give Russia those guarantees. The Biden administration has said some Russian demands are “unacceptable” and that each country has the sovereign right to choose its own security arrangements. But Washington has also signaled that discussion of several Russian proposals – including those on arms control, deconflict of military forces and the conflict in eastern Ukraine – could yield results.
“Both leaders acknowledged that there are likely to be areas where significant progress can be made, as well as areas where agreements may be impossible, and that future talks will more accurately define the contours of each of those categories,” the official said. top american.
During the call, Biden also reiterated that any invasion of Ukraine would face overwhelming economic sanctions by the United States and its partners, as well as a larger NATO presence in Central and Eastern Europe.
Putin told Biden that any sanctions would be a “colossal mistake” that would lead to a “total severance of relations” between Russia and the United States, said Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov.
Addressing a Russian concern, Biden told Putin that the United States has no plans to deploy offensive weapons in Ukraine, Ushakov said.
The United States has provided more than $ 2.5 billion in military aid to Ukraine since 2014, including deadly weapons to help government forces fight Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine.
In general, Ushakov said Russia was satisfied with the telephone conversation and the prospects for further diplomacy early next year, which, according to him, are centered on the guarantees that Moscow wants from the West.
The Eurasia Group, a US-based political risk consultancy, said in a statement to its clients that the Russia-initiated call underscores the pressure Putin is putting on a quick start to negotiations. However, they warned that talks would be slow and “face significant obstacles”.
However, the call was an opportunity for Putin “to voice his grievances, to influence the series of bilateral meetings, US-Russia and OSCE in the second week of January and, equally important, to shape the news cycle for “Russia before the New Year to show that he addressed Russia’s concerns directly to the US president,” Yuval Weber, a Russian military and political strategy expert, told Radio Free Europe.
Russia invaded and annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014 and supports separatists in eastern Ukraine fighting a nearly eight-year war against Kiev forces. Peace talks to end the fighting have stalled as Moscow and Kiev disagree on the interpretation of the framework signed in 2015 known as the Minsk Agreements. Germany and France are mediating these talks.
US officials have stressed that no decision on Europe’s security architecture will be taken without agreement from Ukraine and its European allies.
“We have heard very clearly from our partner and we constantly hear that all issues related to Ukraine will be resolved together with Ukraine,” said her aspirations for NATO membership, said the Ukrainian ambassador to the United States. Oksana Markarova for the Ukrainian Service of Radio Free Europe, an interview that will be broadcast on January 1.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy ahead of Biden’s call with Putin to reiterate “Washington’s unwavering support for Ukraine’s independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity,” the State Department said.
Biden plans to speak with Zelenskiyn shortly after the phone call with Putin.
Weber said Ukraine’s membership in NATO or a bilateral military alliance between the United States and Ukraine “is either many years away or just fantasy, so it’s easy for Biden to say it will not happen and to be gladly accepted by the party.” Russian as a concession ”.
John Herbst, the former US ambassador to Ukraine, said Putin had asked for another phone call “to build on the moment” that he perceived from his last discussion with Biden on December 7.
Putin “still believes he can get one or two concessions from us,” Herbst said, adding that the phone call to Putin itself contains a kind of concession.
Herbst said he did not expect Russia to invade Ukraine.
“I think he is again looking to use this issue – which he created – to see if there is an area to move, whether from the US or France over the Minsk talks or from Germany to Ukraine,” Herbst said. who is now an analyst at the Atlantic Council based in Washington.rel
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