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Russia’s foreign minister urged President Vladimir Putin on Monday to continue talks with the West.
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Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said negotiations aren’t yet exhausted as tensions rise over Ukraine.
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Biden’s national security advisor said there’s a “credible prospect” Russia could invade soon.
Russia’s foreign minister urged President Vladimir Putin on Monday to continue talks with the West, saying that negotiations aren’t yet exhausted as tensions rise over Ukraine.
During a televised meeting on Monday, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said diplomatic talks with the West “are far from being exhausted” after Putin asked him if it made sense to continue negotiations, according to multiple reports.
“I would propose continuing and intensifying them,” Lavrov said of the discussions on security guarantees that Putin seeks from the US and NATO, according to the New York Times. The Russian president responded, “Good,” The Times reported.
Lavrov also said discussions “can’t go on indefinitely, but I would suggest to continue and expand them at this stage,” the Associated Press reported.
Meanwhile, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz visited Kyiv on Monday and will head to Moscow next to continue talks with Putin as Russia continues its military buildup on Ukraine’s border.
“We urgently expect signs of de-escalation from Moscow. Further military aggression would have very serious consequences for Russia,” Scholz tweeted. “I absolutely agree with our allies on that. We are witnessing a very, very serious threat to peace in Europe.”
US national security advisor Jake Sullivan said on Friday that there’s a “credible prospect” Russia could invade Ukraine before the Winter Olympics are set to end on Sunday.
“We are not saying a final decision has been made by President Putin,” Sullivan said at a White House press briefing. “What we are saying is that we have a sufficient level of concern based on what we are seeing on the ground, and what our intelligence analysts have picked up, that we are sending this clear message.”
Sullivan echoed calls from the Biden administration urging Americans in Ukraine to leave as soon as possible.
Russia since late 2021 has gathered roughly 130,000 troops on Ukraine’s border.
The Kremlin claims it doesn’t plan to invade, though Russia has staged military incursions in Ukraine in the past.
In 2014, Russian invaded Ukraine and annexed Crimea. Since that year, the Kremlin has also supported rebels in a war against Ukrainian forces in the eastern Donbas region.
As the US and its allies vie for a diplomatic resolution to the recent hostilities, Moscow has made demands for binding security guarantees from the West.
This includes permanently banning Ukraine and Georgia from joining NATO. But the alliance and Washington have remained firm that this demand is a non-starter, emphasizing that NATO’s open door policy is not up for discussion.
Russia has accused NATO of ignoring its main security concerns, blaming the alliance for the contentious dynamic in the region despite its aggressive posture toward Ukraine.
Ukraine has sought to join NATO for years, and maintains strong ties with the alliance. Many NATO members, including the US, have provided Ukraine with lethal aid amid the tensions with Russia.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Monday reiterated Kyiv’s NATO ambitions. This came after Ukraine’s ambassador to the UK suggested that his country would be open to dropping its bid to join NATO to avoid war with Russia, before ultimately backtracking.
Though the US has expressed grave concerns that a Russian invasion could be imminent, and moved to evacuate most of its staff from the embassy in Kyiv, some experts still believe that diplomacy could ultimately prevail.
“I think that negotiations are looking more likely than invasion at this point,” William Taylor, a former US ambassador to Ukraine, told CNN on Monday.
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