US President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin will hold a high-stakes video conference call on Tuesday that Biden will use to try to stop Moscow from invading Ukraine, where thousands of troops have gathered near the border.
Ahead of his first direct talks with Putin since July, Biden met with European allies on Monday to discuss plans for sanctions against Russia and to seek a strong allied stance in support of Ukraine’s territorial integrity and sovereignty.
Biden spoke with French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
They called on Russia to de-escalate tensions and return to diplomacy and said their teams will maintain close contact, including in consultation with NATO allies and EU partners, on a “coordinated and comprehensive approach,” the White House said. House.
Biden’s team has identified a series of economic sanctions to be imposed should Russia launch an invasion, a senior Biden administration official said.
A separate source familiar with the situation said targeting Putin’s inner circle has been discussed but no decision has been made. Sanctions against Russia’s largest banks and the ability to convert rubles into dollars and other currencies were also considered, another source said.
White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said it remains unclear whether Putin has made a final decision to invade Ukraine.
The secure video call, with Biden speaking from the White House Situation Room, is expected to take place around 1500 GMT.
Ukraine and NATO powers accuse Russia of building up troops near the border, raising fears of a possible attack. Moscow denies such a plan, accusing Kiev of building its own armed forces in the east, where Russian-backed separatists control much of Ukrainian territory.
Biden’s senior government official said Biden would warn Putin of severe economic penalties if he went to war.
The United States has urged both countries to return to a series of agreements signed in 2014 and 2015 aimed at ending a separatist war by Russian-speakers in eastern Ukraine.
“He will make it clear that there will be very real costs if Russia decides to go ahead, but he will also make it clear that there is an effective way to make progress on diplomacy,” the official told reporters.
The two leaders go into talks with little room for compromise.
In Moscow, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said talks would focus on what Russia sees as NATO’s creeping expansion into its borders, as well as long-term security guarantees for Russia.
Putin has said he wants legally binding guarantees that NATO will not expand further east and a promise that certain types of weapons will not be deployed in countries close to Russia, including Ukraine.
Putin is expected to raise the possibility of holding another US-Russia summit with Biden as well. They last spoke by phone in July and men met in person at a summit in Geneva in June.
“Of course it is (the agenda) bilateral relations, which remain in a rather deplorable state,” Peskov told reporters. “And then it is the questions that are high on the agenda. Mainly tensions around Ukraine, the theme of NATO’s advance towards our borders and President Putin’s initiative on security guarantees.”
International tensions have steadily risen over Ukraine and the Black Sea region. Russia’s defense ministry said Friday it had scrambled fighter jets to escort two US military reconnaissance aircraft over the Black Sea.
On Monday, US General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, met with virtually all NATO defense chiefs to discuss “key security developments across Europe”.
At the United Nations, spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters on Monday that the Biden-Putin meeting is “extremely important given the current context of what we are seeing happening in many parts of the world.”
(This story was not edited by DailyExpertNews staff and was generated automatically from a syndicated feed.)