Russia has suggested that talk of a summit between Vladimir Putin and the US president, Joe Biden, is premature, saying the two leaders could arrange a call or meeting at any time but there were no concrete plans for a high-level encounter.
The Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said on Monday that tensions over Ukraine were rising but diplomatic contacts remained active, adding that the Russian president would soon address a special session of Russia’s security council.
The comments came after the Élysée Palace announced that Biden and Putin had agreed in principle to a summit aimed at de-escalating the crisis following two calls between the Russian leader and French president, Emmanuel Macron, on Sunday.
The White House confirmed that the US president was prepared to take in a summit but remained highly sceptical on whether the offer from Moscow was genuine.
“Of course President Biden said yes, but every indication we see on the ground right now in terms of the disposition of Russian forces, is that they are in fact getting prepared for a major attack on Ukraine,” Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, told NBC’s Today show on Monday.
As Putin staged his televised security council meeting, and ahead of the Russian leaders decision on Moscow’s next step, Biden summoned his top national security officials at the White House, including CIA director William Burns and the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, General Mark Milley.
France’s foreign minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian, who was in Brussels for a meeting with his EU counterparts on Monday, said he would hold talks with his Russian opposite number, Sergei Lavrov, later in the day, while the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, would also call Putin, the Russian state news agency Ria-Novosti reported.
The British foreign minister, Liz Truss, said after talks in Brussels with the Nato secretary-general, Jens Stoltenberg, that western countries were now preparing for a “worst-case scenario”. The airlines Lufthansa, KLM and Air France all cancelled flights to Kyiv.
On Monday, Ukraine requested an urgent meeting of the UN security council to address the threat, citing security assurances also by signed by Russia, the US and Britain that it received in return for giving up its nuclear arsenal in 1994.
“I officially requested UNSC member states to immediately hold consultations under article six of the Budapest memorandum,” the Ukrainian foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, tweeted.
Peskov said Putin and Macron agreed on the need to “continue dialogue between foreign ministries and political advisers” on the Ukraine situation. He said Putin and Biden could meet if they felt it necessary, but stressed it was “premature to talk about specific plans” for a summit.
“The meeting is possible if the leaders consider it feasible,” Peskov said after a flurry of last-ditch diplomacy by Macron over the weekend in which he spoke to Putin, Biden, Boris Johnson and the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
Peskov said US media reports that Russia had drawn up a list of Ukrainians to capture or kill after an invasion were an “absolute lie” and described as “highly unusual” a warning from the US embassy to Americans in Russia that they should prepare plans to leave the country if necessary.
Ukraine’s foreign minister welcomed the French summit proposal, saying Kyiv hoped it would result in Moscow pulling back its estimated 150,000 troops massed along the border, averting a Russian invasion that US and other officials have said could begin at any moment.
“We welcome this initiative. We believe that every effort aimed at a diplomatic solution is worth trying,” Kuleba said in Brussels. “We hope the two presidents will walk out with an agreement about Russia withdrawing its forces.”
Kuleba also called for the EU to start imposing sanctions on Russia now to deter Putin from attacking. “We believe that there are good reasons … to impose at least some of the sanctions now to demonstrate that the EU is not only talking the talk about sanctions, but also walking the walk,” he said.
Macron’s office said on Sunday that in parallel with talks to secure a ceasefire on the ground in the enclave in eastern Ukraine held by Moscow-backed separatists, the president had proposed the Putin-Biden summit and both were open to the idea.
The summit would go ahead, however, only “on the condition that Russia does not invade Ukraine”, the Élysée said. France’s minister for European affairs, Clément Beaune, said on Monday there was still hope for a diplomatic resolution. “If there is still a chance to avoid war, to avoid a confrontation and build a political and diplomatic solution, then we need to take it,” he told French television.
Ukraine’s defence minister, Oleksiy Reznikov, said there was no sign of Russian forces withdrawing from the border, and that Moscow-backed rebels were continuing to shell Ukrainian positions.
“Since the beginning of this day, as of 9am, 14 attacks have already been recorded, 13 of them from weapons prohibited by the Minsk agreements,” he told reporters in Kyiv. “One of our soldiers was wounded. It’s a war crime. They want to provoke us so Russia has a pretext.”
Reznikov said his troops had been given strict instructions not to fire back. He dismissed Kremlin claims that Kyiv was preparing an offensive to retake separatist territories in the east of the country as “fake”. “Of course Russia can start an attack. I’m sure they have a plan like that. The Ukrainian military is ready to resist any scenario. We keep vigil,” he said at a press conference in Kyiv.
A US satellite imagery company, Maxar Images, said its analysis showed “multiple new field deployments of [Russian] armoured equipment and troops” departing from existing military sites into forests and fields about nine to 19 miles from Russia’s border with Ukraine.
The new photos, taken on Sunday, appeared to show vehicle tracks cutting through snow-covered fields that are surrounded by woodland and bordered by roads, with several buildings also visible, indicating troop and equipment movement near three locations in southwestern Russia, Maxar said.
