Ukraine border fears escalate as officials thrash out details of Biden-Putin meeting

Uncertainty has shrouded the details round a much-vaunted meeting between U.S. President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin as fears mount that Russia could possibly be making ready to invade Ukraine.

The White House’s press secretary Jen Psaki said Tuesday that she had no new details concerning a attainable meeting between the 2 leaders, who final met in Switzerland this summer time.

Psaki’s feedback got here after Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov stated Monday that preparation for a summit between Putin and Biden was at an “advanced stage” however that the discussions would most certainly not happen in particular person, news agency TASS reported.

The Biden administration has extra urgent issues concerning Russia in the intervening time, with Psaki saying it remains “deeply concerned” about heightened rhetoric around a reported Russian military buildup on Ukraine’s border.

There have been stories of a Russian troop build-up on Ukraine’s border for weeks, prompting widespread issues that Russia is making ready to invade its neighbor, which was half of the Soviet Union earlier than its dissolution in 1991.

Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 and has been accused of sending troops and weapons to assist pro-Russian uprisings in two self-proclaimed republics within the Donbass area in japanese Ukraine, though it denies this.

Now, many shut watchers of Russia imagine Putin is planning on launching some variety of navy motion in opposition to Ukraine, given the motion of troops and rhetoric out of Moscow, however Russia denies such notions. Putin, himself, has known as them “alarmist.”

“You can discuss whether the likelihood for an incursion is 20% or 80%, it doesn’t matter. We need to be prepared for the worst,” Stoltenberg told reporters after a meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Riga, Latvia.

“There is no certainty, no clarity about exactly what are the Russian intentions, and they may actually evolve and change,” the NATO chief added, noting “they’ve done it before” referring to Crimea.

“We need to convey a message to Russia that they should not conduct a military incursion into Ukraine. They have done it before. They continue to support the separatists in Donbass. And we should deter, send the message, that they should not do that again. And hopefully they will not do it. But as I said, we also need to be prepared for the other scenario, that Russia actually, once again, use military force,” he stated.

Stoltenberg reiterated a warning to Russia that ”any future Russian aggression in opposition to Ukraine would come at a excessive value and have critical political and financial penalties for Russia.” The U.S. and EU have also warned Russia against attacking Ukraine, and Russia is already under international sanctions for its annexing of Crimea.

While it aspires to membership, Ukraine is not a member of either the EU or NATO, however, and NATO is under no obligation to defend the country. As such, just how far the U.S. and EU might go to defend the country is uncertain. Stoltenberg referred to the issue on Tuesday, noting that it was “vital to tell apart between NATO allies and companion Ukraine.”

Ukraine has reportedly urged NATO to prepare economic sanctions on Russia and boost military cooperation with Kyiv, with the country’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba telling reporters that “we are going to name on the allies to affix Ukraine in placing collectively a deterrence bundle” as he arrived for ongoing talks with his NATO counterparts in Riga on Wednesday, Reuters reported.

He responded by saying that red lines would “in all probability be threats emanating from that territory [Ukraine] … in the event that they station and deploy assault techniques on Ukrainian soil the flight time to Moscow can be 5-7 minutes …. and we must reply with one thing comparable, in opposition to those that are menacing us and we are able to do this, we’re succesful.”

He said Russia was concerned about military exercises he claimed were being carried out near Russian borders, saying these posed a threat to Moscow.

“The Russian Federation is anxious to an extent over main navy workouts carried out close to its borders, together with within the Black Sea only recently, when strategic bombers have been flying simply 20 kilometers away from our border, armed with precision weapons and doubtlessly even nuclear weapons, positively we might regard that as a menace to us,” Putin said. He then complained about the expansion of NATO and military infrastructure, missile defense systems, that are positioned in Poland and Romania.

Russia said Wednesday it had started regular winter military drills in its southern military district, parts of which border Ukraine, and that 10,000 troops had relocated to training grounds across the area, Reuters reported.

Speaking to CNBC Wednesday, Andrey Kostin, president and chairman of VTB Bank, responded to reports of the troop buildup on the Ukrainian border.

“Whatever actions we’re making throughout the nation, it is inside our territory, whereas, for instance, we’ve NATO ships, together with American ships, roaming the Black Sea which is just 20 or 30 kilometers away from the Russian border … We live underneath circumstances the place a NATO missile may attain our territory in seven minutes, so we’re underneath a a lot greater menace, we imagine, than NATO international locations or America,” he told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe.”

Noting the poor state of relations between Russia and the West, Kostin said that the absence of trust was “a terrific menace to Russia,” although he hoped relations could improve.

“We very a lot imagine that in the end the connection will grow to be higher, we count on some announcement on the attainable meeting between Mr Putin and Mr Biden so we very a lot count on that right here might be some optimistic adjustments.”