Macron takes leading role in Ukraine-Russia crisis: Live news | Ukraine-Russia crisis News
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French president to meet Russia’s Putin on Monday and Ukraine’s Zelenskyy a day later in a bid to defuse tensions.
French President Emmanuel Macron will meet Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Monday in a bid to warn of a feared Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The French leader has said he is aiming for “dialogue with Russia and de-escalation” from the talks, which are scheduled to begin at 14:00 GMT.
Macron’s effort is the highest-profile intervention yet by a Western leader to defuse tensions; he will visit Kyiv for talks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Tuesday.
The concentration of an estimated 100,000 Russian soldiers and military equipment near the Ukraine border has fueled Western fears that Moscow may be planning an attack. Russia denies it is preparing for an invasion and has accused the United States-led NATO military alliance of undermining the region’s security.
It wants NATO to bar Ukraine and other ex-Soviet nations from membership and roll back forces from Eastern Europe. Washington and NATO have rejected Russia’s demands as non-starters.
Here are the latest updates:
France’s role in the crisis and the 2015 Minsk agreement
- Macron has said it is essential to “prevent a degradation of the situation” and that it is legitimate for Russia to raise security concerns.
- “The geopolitical objective of Russia today is clearly not Ukraine, but to clarify the rules of cohabitation with NATO and the EU,” Macron told the French newspaper Journal du Dimanche in an interview published on Sunday.
- France has played a central role in attempting to mediate between Kyiv and Moscow in the past. Alongside Germany, it helped broker a 2015 peace deal for eastern Ukraine in a bid to end the hostilities between Ukrainian forces and Russian-backed separatists that erupted the previous year following Moscow’s annexation of the Crimean Peninsula.
- The agreement signed in the Belarusian capital, Minsk, helped stop large-scale fighting, but efforts at a political settlement have stalled and frequent skirmishes have continued along the tense line of contact in Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland, the Donbas.
- Putin and his officials have urged France, Germany and other Western allies to encourage Ukraine to fulfill its obligations under the 2015 agreement, which envisaged broad autonomy for the rebel-held east and a sweeping amnesty for the separatists. The agreement stipulated that only after those conditions are met would Ukraine be able to restore control of its border with Russia in rebel regions.
- But many in Ukraine see the Minsk deal as a betrayal of national interests and authorities have strongly warned the West against pressuring Kyiv to implement the agreement amid the current tensions.
Kremlin expects no decisive breakthrough from Putin-Macron meeting
The Kremlin has said it does not anticipate any decisive breakthrough during the talks between Putin and Macron, but expects that the French leader will propose ways to ease tensions in Europe.
“The situation is too complex to expect decisive breakthroughs in the course of one meeting,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told a news briefing.
But he said Russia was aware of certain ideas for lowering tensions that Macron had talked about before and planned to share with Putin.
Peskov added that Moscow had heard nothing new in recent days on the security guarantees it is requesting. “Our Western interlocutors prefer not to mention this topic,” he said.
UK FM may visit Russia: Report
Moscow and London are discussing a possible visit by the United Kingdom’s foreign ministry to Moscow on Thursday, the RIA Novosti news agency quotes Russia’s foreign ministry as saying.
Russia links US nuclear arms talks to security demands: Report
The fate of nuclear arms controls talks between Russia and the US will to a large extent depend on how negotiations on Moscow’s security demands progress, a senior Russian diplomat has been quoted as saying.
Vladimir Yermakov, head of nuclear non-proliferation and controls at Russia’s foreign ministry, told RIA Novosti news agency that discussions over the Kremlin’s proposals have taken priority over strategic arms controls talks.
No meetings have been agreed on the latter, and their resumption now depends largely on resolving the immediate security issues raised by Moscow, he said.
Top Biden aide says Ukraine invasion could come ‘any day’
US NSA Jake Sullivan has said Russia could invade Ukraine “any day”.
“It could happen as soon as tomorrow or it could take a few weeks yet,” he warned on Sunday.
“If war breaks out, it will come at an enormous human cost to Ukraine, but we believe that based on our preparations and our response, it will come at a strategic cost to Russia as well,” Sullivan added.
Ukraine says don’t believe ‘apocalyptic predictions’ over Russia
Ukraine has dismissed “apocalyptic predictions” of a possibly imminent full-scale invasion by Russia after US officials said Moscow had assembled 70 percent of the military forces needed for such a move.
“Don’t believe the apocalyptic predictions. Different capitals have different scenarios, but Ukraine is ready for any development, ”Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba tweeted on Sunday.
Read more here.
Australian PM reiterates call for citizens to leave Ukraine
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has said he is “highly concerned” about the crisis and has reiterated his government’s call for Australians to leave Ukraine.
Morrison told reporters in Canberra that consular officials have been working for weeks to convey the message to those who remain in Ukraine that “it is time to leave if you wish to leave.”
He also called on Russia to continue discussions to resolve the situation.
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