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Emerging from a five-hour meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron in Moscow around midnight Monday, Putin said that there would be “no winners" if war broke out between NATO and Russia.
In Washington, President Biden upped the ante following talks with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, declaring that the Nord Stream 2 project designed to send gas from Russia to Germany would be abandoned if Moscow again sends forces into Ukraine.
Macron, who has long pushed for a European foreign policy that is more independent of Washington, has spoken regularly by phone with Putin in recent weeks. He agreed to speak again with his Russian counterpart following his Tuesday visit to Kyiv, where he is set to discuss Moscow’s demands with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Scholz is set to travel to Kyiv on Feb. 14 and to Moscow a day later.
The crisis meetings come after U.S. officials warned over the weekend that a full-scale Russian invasion could leave as many as 50,000 civilians dead or injured.
In a news conference following Monday’s one-on-one at the Kremlin, Macron called the coming days “decisive.”
“We are in a situation of extreme tension, a degree of incandescence that Europe has rarely known in the past decades,” he said.
Paris put forward proposals that may lead to joint steps toward de-escalation of the crisis, Putin said, without elaborating. But he said these were “probably still too early to talk about.” He also said there was room for some discussion with Washington and NATO on Russia’s demands, but only on matters of secondary importance to Moscow.
Russia has demanded that Ukraine, which Putin sees as part of the Kremlin’s sphere of influence, be permanently prevented from joining the Western military alliance. Moscow also views the expansion of NATO into Eastern Europe as an existential threat. “It’s not us moving toward NATO,” Putin said overnight. “It’s NATO moving toward us.”
Putin has massed more than 100,000 troops and equipment near Ukraine’s border — potentially positioning for what could become the largest military land offensive in Europe since World War II.
The same day, Biden hosted Scholz at the White House as Western allies attempt to present a unified front in the crisis. Scholz has faced criticism at home and abroad that he hasn’t been doing enough to address the crisis, supplying Kyiv with helmets as other NATO allies send troops and military equipment. The German leader said Monday that his country was “absolutely united” with the United States and other NATO allies and "we will not be taking different steps.”
U.S. officials are concerned that a massive Russia-Belarus military exercise, set to begin Thursday, could be used as part of a multipronged invasion of Ukraine. The exercise has seen Russian troops and equipment travel more than 6,000 miles to Belarus, and the deployment of advanced missile systems, fighter planes and bombers.
Belarusian authorities are planning to arm some first responders in the Emergencies Ministry to assist the military in the event of any conflict, the state-run BelTA news agency reported Monday.
Meanwhile, an influential separatist commander in Ukraine’s contested eastern territories reportedly urged Russia to send 30,000 reinforcements to bolster rebel forces. Alexander Khodakovsky said the separatists had 30,000 fighters of their own, but only 10,000 were fit for front line duties. “We need to have at least 40,000, but 40,000 with automatic rifles on the front line,” he told Reuters.
Putin on Monday again called on Zelensky to implement the 2015 Minsk agreements that called for a measure of autonomy in Ukraine’s east and an amnesty for Russian-backed insurgents there. The accords, viewed as generally favorable to Moscow, were brokered by Berlin and Paris after several Ukrainian military defeats following Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014.
“You may like it or may not like it, but my beauty, you’ve got to put up with it,” the Russian president said, in remarks widely viewed as crude.
Pannett reported from Sydney. Dixon reported from Moscow. Missy Ryan in Washington and Rick Noack in Paris contributed to this report.
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