MOSCOW: Russia’s top diplomat on Monday advised President Vladimir Putin to continue talks with the West on Russia’s security demands amid tensions over Ukraine.
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s statement signals the Kremlin’s intention to stay on the diplomatic path, although the US has warned that Moscow could invade Ukraine at any time.
Speaking at the beginning of a meeting with Putin, Lavrov suggested that Moscow should continue to negotiate with the US and its allies, even if they rejected Russia’s core security demands.
Moscow wants guarantees from the West that NATO will not allow Ukraine and other former Soviet countries to join as members, and that the coalition will halt the deployment of weapons to Ukraine and withdraw its forces from Eastern Europe.
Lavrov noted that even though the US and its allies have rejected those demands, Washington has offered to negotiate missile deployment limits in Europe, a ban on military exercises and other confidence-building measures.
Putin has not yet prepared Russia’s formal response to those proposals.
Asked by Putin whether it was prudent to continue diplomatic efforts, Lavrov replied that the prospects for the talks were “far from finished”, and offered to continue the talks.
“The talks cannot go on indefinitely, but I would suggest continuing and expanding them at this stage,” Lavrov said.
Their meeting came as Germany’s chancellor began a trip to Kiev and Moscow for a final effort to stop a feared Russian invasion of Ukraine, some warning that it could be only days away.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz visited Ukraine on Monday and plans to go to Moscow for talks with Putin. Moscow denies that it has any plans to attack, but it has amassed well over 130,000 troops near Ukraine and, in US view, used enough firepower to launch an attack at short notice. is constructed.
“We are facing a very serious threat to peace in Europe,” Scholz tweeted from Kiev, adding that Germany wanted to see “signs of de-escalation” from Moscow.
With concerns about imminent war looming, the German military said the first of about 350 additional troops being sent to bolster NATO forces in Lithuania were on their way on Monday. Six howitzer guns were also being loaded onto trucks for transport to the eastern side of the alliance.
The world is already on high alert, with Britain’s Armed Forces Minister James Happy saying a Russian attack “could now effectively go without notice”. It follows a warning from US officials that an offensive could come this week that could lead to a flurry of diplomacy but also preventative measures.
Meanwhile, Lithuania expelled the families of diplomats and some non-essential diplomatic workers from Ukraine; The US is already pulling most of its staff from the embassy in Kiev. And the Greek Foreign Ministry joined several Western countries in urging their citizens to leave the country.
The moves were the latest preparation for a possible war. On Sunday, some airlines canceled flights to Kiev and troops there unloaded fresh consignments of weapons from NATO members. Ukraine’s Air Traffic Safety Agency declared the airspace over the Black Sea a “potential danger zone” due to Russian naval exercises and recommended that aircraft avoid flying over the sea on 14–19 February.
The US and its NATO allies have repeatedly warned that Russia will pay a high price for any aggression but they have sometimes struggled to present a united front. Scholz’s government, in particular, has been criticized for refusing to supply lethal weapons to Ukraine or stating what sanctions it would support against Russia, which is about Berlin’s resolve to stand up to Moscow. raises questions.
So far, NATO’s warnings have had little effect: Russia has only increased troops and weapons in the region and launched large-scale exercises in its ally Belarus, which is also neighboring Ukraine. The West fears that the exercise, which will last until Sunday, could be used by Moscow as a cover for an invasion from the north.
Russia has repeatedly dismissed Ukrainian and Western concerns about military build-up, saying it has the right to deploy troops wherever needed on its territory.
Some observers expect Moscow to eventually accept a settlement that would help avoid hostilities and allow all sides to save face. While NATO refuses to close the door to Ukraine, the coalition also has no intention of embracing it or any other ex-Soviet nation anytime soon. Some experts have proposed a neutral position for Ukraine to halt NATO expansion or de-escalate tensions.
Ukraine’s ambassador to the UK, Vadim Pristyko, suggested a similar middle path, telling the BBC on Sunday that the country could abandon its goal of joining NATO “an objective that is enshrined in its constitution” if it Will avoid war with Russia.
“We can be especially threatened, blackmailed, and pushed into that kind of thing,” Prestico told BBC Radio 5.
On Monday, however, Prestico backtracked, saying “we are ready to make many concessions to avoid war … but it has nothing to do with NATO, which is enshrined in the constitution.”
Asked about Prystaiko’s remarks, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia would welcome such a move, but noted its quick rebuttal by the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry.
Ukrainian Parliament Speaker Ruslan Stefanchuk also insisted that there had been no talk about modifying the constitutional provision that refers to NATO membershipAnd some lawmakers called for Prystaiko’s dismissal.
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmitro Kuleba said on Sunday that Kiev requested a meeting of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe in the next 48 hours to discuss Russian deployment near the country’s borders.
Poland, which currently chairs the OSCE, said the meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, but it is not likely to ease tensions.
With the move in the region, the Russian Defense Ministry summoned the military attache of the US embassy on Saturday to protest a US submarine in Russian waters near the Kuril Islands in the Pacific. The Russian military said the submarine initially ignored orders to leave, but was abandoned after the Navy used unspecified “appropriate means”. The US has denied that its ship ever entered Russian waters.
Asked by lawmakers on Monday whether the military could attack foreign warships entering Russian waters, Stanislav Gadzimagomedov, the deputy chief of the Russian Army’s General Staff, said the military was ready, but said it would decisions are made only at the highest level.
High-level diplomacy has also continued but has yielded little results so far. The White House said that in Saturday’s one-hour call with Putin, US President Joe Biden said attacking Ukraine would result in “widespread human suffering” and that the West was committed to ending the crisis, but “within other scenarios”. equally prepared.”
Biden also spoke to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky for nearly an hour on Sunday, agreeing to pursue both deterrence and diplomacy to try to stop a Russian offensive.
As he has done before, Zelensky tried to downplay the idea that a conflict was imminent, noting that Kiev and other cities in Ukraine are “under safe and reliable protection”.
His office’s readout of the call also quoted him as suggesting that a quick Biden visit would help defuse the situation, a possibility not mentioned in the White House summary of the call.
Russia and Ukraine have been locked in a bitter conflict since 2014, when Ukraine’s Kremlin-friendly leader was ousted by a popular uprising. Moscow occupied the Crimean peninsula and then supported a separatist insurgency in eastern Ukraine, where more than 14,000 people died in fighting.
A 2015 peace deal brokered by France and Germany helped prevent large-scale fighting, but regular skirmishes continue, and efforts to reach a political settlement have stalled.